AIR RACE OFFER

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 110, 3 February 1931, Page 9

AIR RACE OFFER

Secretary Replies to Lady Houston

POLICY OF PRUDENCE By Preas Association—Copyright. London, February L "Lady Houston’s announcement of her offer to help in the holding of the Schneider Air Race Is another proof that many of the rich regard the Labour Government as merely a hateful interlude, In which only the barest pretence of social decency is required,” said Mr. F. Montague, Under-Secretary - for Air, speaking at Reading. “While wealthy industrialists demand the most stringent economy at the cost of the desperately poor, she talks about the Socialist Government's paltry excuses and the thermal state of her blood. It would have been more sporting if she had made her promise in the patriotic spirit she claims to possess.”

In announcing that she would make up the amount necessary to enable Britain to defend the Schneider Cup, Lady Houston made a vigorous attack on what she described as the “lie-down-and-kick-me” attitude of the Labour Government. This is not the first time she had opposed, in more or less spectacular fashion, the decrees of Socialist authorities. A year or so ago she took umbrage at the action of the Hull City Council —at that time controlled by a Socialist majority—in giving a week’s notice to 115 tramway employees. In a letter to the council she wrote: “Lady Houston wishes the Hull City Council to understand t|ht, if they, persist in' this profidious and unworthy action, instead of fighting 115 poor tramwaymen with no money at their backs, the Hull City Council will be fighting Lady Houston, as she will quite cheerfully take the burden of this very unequal fight, which she has no doubt of winning, upon her own shoulders.” ■ In the end the dispute was amicably settled. Although it is generally believed that, by retiring to live in Jersey, Lady Houston, who is the widow of the millionaire shin-owner, evaded the payment of death duties on her husband’s estate, the fact is that in 1927 she paid to the Exchequer the sum of £1,500,000, “purely as an act of grace.” Questions were asked in Parliament as to the amount she would have been obliged to pay in the event of the Government pressing the case to a legal decision, but these were not answered by Mr. Winston Churchill, the then Chancellor. Among the many gifts Lady Houston has made from time to time is one of £lO,OOO to the Liverpool Cathedral. She has presetned large sums of money to hospitals and charitable institutions, but always she has. refrained brusquely from indiscrminate giving.