Socialists in Britain

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 291, 4 September 1931, Page 11

Socialists in Britain

Sir In “The Dominion” of August 28 under the heading of “Mischief-making” you trounce your evening contemporary for its manner of advocating “Fusion.’ You, however, make a similar error in your leader of that date. Referring to the economic crisis m Britain and certain statements by the “Daily Herald” relating thereto, you write: “It is a sort of bogey man business ’ intended to conceal the real culprits, the spendthrift ‘Socialists,’ who have reduced British financial resources to the point of exhaustion.” Now, sir, you in common with all thinking people know that the causes of this crisis are: (a) The war debt and the burden of interest payments;, (b) the war debt settlements and remissions ;■ (c) the loss of overseas markets through poverty, changed economic and political conditions, tariffs, etc., in foreign lands, principally due to the war; (d) the premature return (in Britain) to the gold standard; (e) the inelasticity of our monetary system. For these things the spendthrift Socialist policy is nowise responsible; rather is its ambulance work rendered necessary by after-war conditions being also directed .to so, improve housing, etc., so that every child born to the nation should have the opportunity to develop into an Al adult. When the true dispassionate, history of the first decades of this century is written it may be recorded that Conservative and Liberal policies led the people into war and then to economic disaster. Socialism may be anathema to you, but “Fair Play is Bonnie Play.” Why descend to misrepresentation?—l am, etc.,

Levin, August 29. [There is no doubt a good deal of truth in the contention of “1915" that the general condition of affairs in Britain, as in other parts of the world, has resulted largely from war waste and the burden of war debts.* Our contention, however, regarding the “Spendthrift Socialists” was that they had accentuated the downward drift by their squandering of the resources of the Mother Country on social services beyond the capacity of the country to bring a condition of affairs which even now many of them refuse to recognise.]