FOOD-POLITICS-TOURISTS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25271, 25 August 1947, Page 6

FOOD-POLITICS-TOURISTS

LONDON MISCELLANY

(Specially Written for “The Press.”)

[By

SYDNEY BROOKES.)

London, August 16-—The Ministry of Food, controlled by one of Labour’s most ardent Socialist theorists, has lately come out in favour of common or bourgeois competition among free units of private enterprise. Greengrocers are to be decontrolled. Anyone may now sell fruit and vegetables. The . licensing system, which limited the establishment of new businesses, is abandoned. The Government has found that the growers, wholesalers, and shopkeepers have been able to turn to their own advantage all the systems of control which have been tried. Controlled fruit simply disappeared from the shops. Uncontrolled fruit appeared in plenty, at outrageous prices. Supply and demand never combined more vigorously and. frequently, more viciously, to overcome attempts to protect the nation of shopkeepers from its own ingrained shopkeeping instincts. Mr Strachey gave up last week and now hopes that competition among the traders will bring supplies to the market and keep prices down. Last week-end the vegetable trade offered us its best example of enterprise in fleecing the public. Cucumbers, although plentiful, have been selling at high prices. Last month they were 2s each. Last week-end the growers flooded Covent Garden with cucumbers. The shopkeepers, long trained in the economics of shortages, left them there until at the end of the Saturday the price was down to 6d a box of 18 or two dozen. The shopkeepers still left them alone, and on the following Monday the price in the shops was still 6d per lb. There was some case here tor controlling the means of production, distribution, and exchange. It was equally certain that one knew how to organise the necessary controls or make them work. A Socialist government may declare broad principles, make great schemes for nationalising the bigger industries, and use taxation and banking control to create the appearance of service to the theory, but down on the level where people live and do their shopping, production, distribution, and exchange are operated on the old grim principles. No expert on the subject of milk, your correspondent measures its quality by the amount of cream showing in the neck of the bottle. The experts have lately confirmed the impression that the layer of colour has been becoming thinner and thinner. Professor H. D. Kay, Director of the Dairying Research Institute at Reading, says that the decline in the non-fatty solids content of milk, not counting the decline in butter-fat content, is costing Britain 340,000 hundredweights (calculated as dry weight) of first-class foodstuff. A large proportion of the loss is in protein. The professor reports “a slow, gradual decline in fat and nonfatty solids” in the nation’s milk. It has been going on,'Hie says, for 2U years, and is continuing. The drop in the non-fatty solids content became severe during the war-time winters, and is still serious. British farmers have greatly increased milk production, but they are short of feed, and the price they receive is not based on quality. There is some inspection for cleanliness, and ihe Ministry of Health tests dairies for watered milk, but generally the farmer has little incentive and his cows no real encouragement to produce rich milk. The distribution industry in Britain is not closely supervised. Pasteurisation is often perfunctory, and the milk is harshly treated on the roads and railways. Collection in many parts of the country is carried out by tanker lorries, into which the milk from dozens of farms may be poured. For the London area, milk is nandled like oil or petrol. It is piped from the collecting tankers to railway tankers, and from them to bottling plants. The milk on the doorstep in the morning is quite likely to contain samples of good milk from a good herd mixed with bad and dangerous milk from a nonnested herd. The main thing, however, is that the layer of cream on top is very thin. It is hardly worth getting up early to be first at the bottle.

Politics The recess may bring some personal relief to Mr Attlee from the criticism and abuse to which he has been subjected this month. Not all of it has teen logical. Critics who have complained of his weakness as a leader complained also that the powers he bsked in the new Supplies and Services Bill were totalitarian. But even the most reasonable critics of the Government, and many of its friends, have strongly criticised the Prime Minister’s personal performance in the management of the crisis. Mr Attlee is accustomed to abuse from the popular newspapers of the right. It must have hurt the more to find the left and liberal press joining in the criticism, with quieter and therefore more effective arguments. “The Times” struck the finally effective blow on the last day of the summer session. Mr Attlee was the resultant of contending

Despite the new ruling that giving information from private party meetbe a breach of the privilege of the House, the newspapers have managed to secure a good deal of in-

iormation about the behind-the-scenes pctivity during the crisis debates, ‘Daily Telegraph” and the “Daily Mail” were aole to give the voting fig. ures at the Labour Parliamentary Party’s important meeting. The political columnists have even reported some of the events at a pre-debate Cabinet meeting. It seems to be well enough established that Mr Aneurin Bevan complained that there wag n o t enough Socialism in the Government’s plans, and Mr Attlee, facing some severe criticism from a group of his Ministers, offered to resign. But he is possibly the only Labour leader who could be Prime Minister, because none of the others would serve under, or with, anyone else. Members of the Commons displayed a good deal of bad temper in the final days of the session. One titled member suggested that the Labour members would be spending the recess m pubs. The main target of his sniping protested his teetotalism, and added that he wouldn’t be wasting his time shooting grouse. Mr Blackburn, who voted against his own party on the Powers Bill, thought he heard Mr Driberg say something about “a rat” Mr Driberg made a careful selection among suitable retorts. He avoided any reference to sinking ships, but wai clearly heard to discuss the fitting of hats. Short temper and nerve strain were evident outside the House. The headline writers distorted the news with more than usual abandon. Labour’s own “Daily Herald” offered the best example the penny press has given for some time. This newspaper report of Mr Morrison’s final retort to the Conservatives—none of which was complimentary—was headlined “The Truth About the Tories.” Most of the reviews became angry and, at the same time, confused. Only in the maligned House of Lords was dignity preserved. The Upper House added considerably to its prestige, especially by the decision to come back early to keep on eye on the Government’s progress. The general impression of the public’s reactions to all the argument was that people just gave up. Political feeling is seldom demonstrated in public places in Britain. The only hint in recent weeks that the public has been closely concerned about local or world events has come from an increasing . number of angry comments on the terrorists in Palestine. Thoughts on the balance of payment are not ventilated where a reporter could gather them for redistribution. The only hint of public feeling your correspondent was able to gather during the crisis debate was on the night of the Prime Minister’* broadcast. Where it came over loudspeakers, it was ignored.

The English tourist of the Continent is a cartoon figure. Continental visitors to London had better be careful, or they will be getting into “Punch” themselves. The summer season has brought thousands of sightseers from France and the Low Countries. They are easily identified. Most of them come as if prepared to climb mountains. They wear rucsacs on the lawns round Westminster Abbey, and take a grip on the steps of St. Paul’s with hob-nailed boots. When their trousers are blue their shirts are yellow, and the women, far from displaying chic, flap about in loose sweaters, unruly hair, and denim slacks. Their main interest seems to lie in public buildings. The tourist in London from other parts of England is also easily identified. He wears his very best clothes and has special preferences in sight-seeing. If those who ask directions are any indication, he comes first to see Big Beu, next to stand in Downing Street mis- . taking clerks for Cabinet Ministers, and third to gaze for unwearying hours at the mounted sentries outside the Horse Guards. These sentries who traditionally never blink an eyelash, are, it turns out, quite ordinary men and horses. The horses twitch and shuffle, and the men make no bones about following any pretty figure passing by. For children the shining swords are fascinating, but for grown ups, interested in more practical matters, it is more interesting to watch the streaks of bianco running down the horse’s nose and flanks, as rain in wet weather or perspiration in hot weather loosens its grip on the Guards* accoutrements. This is about the most popular spectacle in town.

London is looking excessively normal; crowded, busy, prosperous. One of the difficulties about a balance of payments problem is that it is not visible. No one walks about looking as if he were worried about his dollar reserves. Traffic in Westminster does • not stop because of non-discrimination. Article Nine obviously does not concern the trippers on the Thames, or the crowds packing the tubes on the way home from work. And with Parliament in recess, the crisis seems already a thing of the past, psychologically, although simple arithmetic puts it squarely in the almost immediate future. Foreboding seems to be taking an annual holiday. The sun shines not traffic roars louder, pneumatic drills tear up the pavement, and the yard of the Houses of Parliament is empty of members’ motor-cars.