IMPERIAL PREFERENCE

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27986, 5 June 1956, Page 3

IMPERIAL PREFERENCE

Sir, —Your comment. “It is very curious that successive British governments which must be no less anxious than Mr Edmonds to preserve ‘the British way of life,’ have approved the aims of the I.M.F. and G.A.T.T. and have regarded Britain’s membership as not only beneficial but essential to British interests,” deserves repetition. A clue to quell your curiosity is supplied by the Rt. Hon. L. S. Amery when he declared: “The American negotiators would certainly not have agreed to the line of credit if we had made it clear that we should not join Bretton Woods.” When an impartial survey of the facts show that these international commitments were, in the first place, the extra price, unwillingly accepted, of a loan to a desperate applicant, your curiosity should be completely satis^ed. —Yours, etc.. GEO. M. EDMONDS. June .4, 1956. [No-one questioned Amery’s patriotism; many questioned his judgment on economic matters, and especially his attachment to protection and Imperial preference, which he felt to be threatened by the terms of the American loan.—Ed., “The Press.”]

Sir, —You refer to Mr Edmonds’s warning concerning “sinister” forces, as though such were non-existent. In 1950 a resolution was carried “that dollar aid under the Marshall Plan be denied Britain until the partition of Ireland was ended.” This was later rescinded, but 20 per cent, of the United States House of Representatives supported the offensively impertinent resolution. When Britain had her back to the wall during the war years and asked America for a loan she was kept waiting for abotit three months before consent was reluctantly given. It is notorious that President Roosevelt was anti-British —so much so that Winston Churchill bluntly asked him at a conference if he wanted to destroy the British Empire! Mass feeling in the United States towards Britain is friendly, but there is much vindictive jealousy higher up. Why ignore it? —Yours, etc.. FLAMBEAU. June 4/ 1956. [About a similar proportion of members of the British House of Commons are no less fanatically antiAmerican. Neither determines its government’s policy, let alone the pdlicy of a widely representative international body such as the I.M.F. or G.A.T.T.—Ed., “The Press.”]