PRESENT BRITISH DIFFICULTIES

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25247, 28 July 1947, Page 7

PRESENT BRITISH DIFFICULTIES

MR BEVIN SPEAKS AT DURHAM

ECONOMIC HANDICAP IN FOREIGN POLICY (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 10 pjn.) LONDON. July 27. The Foreign Secretary (Mr Ernest Bevin). addressing the miners* annual gala at Durham, denied that because the British were in difficulties they were therefore incompetent. That impeachment, he said, usually came from people from overseas who stayed about a fortnight. “We are handicapped because we fought the war from the beginning to the end without reservation, because we stood alone in 1940, ana because the value of the American dollar loan is not what we thought it would be,” he said. He recalled his recent statement that he did not like to be tied to moneylenders. “I did not mean the United States or anyone else,” he said. “I was uttering a very human expression. Nobody would like it It upset Mr Taft, according to one report, and provoked an international incident. (Laughter.) “The British don’t like having to borrow. We don’t mind earning it We don’t confuse borrowing with investment to enable us to get the machines and equipment to earn. If we have to borrow we like it to be as little as possible. Therefore, Britain and the countries of Europe were right in responding to General Marshall’s suggestion that we should first see what we could do for ourselves.”

Mr Bevin added: “Others must not try to impose conditions which prevent Britain’s great Empire development plans.” Mr Bevin said he would never go back on the miners’ five-day week as long as he was in office, but he might have to ask for “a temporary helpout.” His predecessors in diplomacy had been able to give creaits and assistance to other countries, but for the two years he had been in office he had not had a pound of coal or any textiles because Dr. Dalton (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had been unable to let him have any credits.

“The Government is carrying on in foreign affairs without the tools to do the job, and I must be helped out,” he said.

Mr Douglas Jay. a Labour member of Parliament, speaking at Eastbourne, said: “The time is coming when we shall have to tell the Americans that unless they are prepared to pay the cost of the British zone of Germany we shall have to evacuate, - probably by the end of 1947.”