“TIME RUNNING AGAINST US”

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25271, 25 August 1947, Page 7

“TIME RUNNING AGAINST US”

Mr Morrison Urges Greater Effort

BRITAIN’S NEED Of FOOD AND COAL

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, Aug. 23. “Britain’s greatest shortage now is time,” said Mr Herbert Morrison, Lord President of the Council, in a broadcast to-night over the 8.8. C. “Time is running against us even faster than the drain of dollars. We have done great things since the war, but we have still not done enough and we have done it too slowly.” Mr Morrison said Britain was producing nearly one-third more food than before the war, but needed to produce half as much again and do it quickly. Food-growing had top priority and other things must take a lower place.

“There must be less private motoring so that the farms may have more tractors and petrol,” said Mr Morrison." “More houses must be put up for farm

workers, and that means fewer houses for other people. Those on the land must be given food and other things they need to keep them at full efficiency. “The nation also needs a lot more coal and needs it quickly. There is no public service to-day more urgent than getting coal. If the miners rise to this occasion they will have justified the Socialism which was their dream for years, they will have won themselves the place which is waiting for them as the shock troops of Britain’s industrial army, and they will have saved Britain.” More people had to work in the cotton and woollen industries, foundries, and brickworks if Britain was to win through. He appealed to people doing unessential work voluntarily to change their jobs. He also appealed to the people to prevent inflation by putting money into savings “to check too much money chasing after too few goods.” Britain needed more of a will to win the peace like the will it had to win the war. Reply to Mr Churchill Mr Morrison. referring to Mr Churchill’s broadcast of August 16, said that Mr Churchill sought to suggest that Britain was becoming totalitarian. “He seeks to show the nation which way it should go, but can find no better way of doing it than recalling the line he took as a Liberal Minister 41 years ago,” said Mr Morrison. “Mr Churchill offers the nation not a lead forward but a lead back to what he calls competitive selection which, as used by the Conservatives, is no more than a plausible label for the system of slumps, booms, undeserved rewards, and unjust nenalties. Almost everyone suffered from the unmerited miseries of that system before the war. If Mr Churchill asks the people who were Britain’s backbone during the war, how they got on under competitive selection between the two wars they will give a clear, sharp answer.” The Labour Government would not support competitive selection as the Conservatives would practise it. “We are going forward to a transformed and strengthened Britain in which everyone can work to a purpose. We will all have to work to get there. The Government cannot do the whole job,” said Mr Morrison. Britain was seeing things come true which not so long ago were dreams. It had very nearly provided jobs for all. Social security and health services were nearly an accomplished fact. But Britain could achieve nothing without more solid, determined .effort.

“People talk a lot about incentives,” he said. “I believe that a lot of this talk is bunk. I will not believe that British men and women are not going to give Britain all the effort she needs unless they are spoon-fed and bribed. I will not believe that we are short of people who will give what it takes to see Britain through without thought and argument about what they are going to get out of it.”