THE IMPERIAL POLICY GROUP

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 256, 25 July 1936, Page 8

THE IMPERIAL POLICY GROUP

The cable news this week has reported the adhesion of Lords Lonsdale and Middleton to what is known as the Imperial Policy Group. According to one of its English publicists, nothing has demonstrated more forcibly than this group’s “rise to power” in the Conservative Party that “youth is forging to the front in British politics.” Since Lord Lonsdale is 79 years old, it seems that youth has found the need of a little of the stiffening of _ experience Generally, however, the group is an alliance of politically young Right Wing Conservatives. There is a younger and possibly more vigorous, but smaller. Left Wing of the party, interesting itself at the moment in Mr. Lloyd George’s Council of Action and in the forward-looking policy of the “Next Five Years” Group. In presenting its “policy for the Nation and Empire” the Imperial Policy Group describes itself as “A group within the Conservative Party which seeks to penetrate Conservative thought with Tory principles and build on these principles a national and Imperial policy.” Only by these means, it is contended, can the Conservative Party be made an effective force. The summary of aims proceeds:— We believe that tbe prosperity of the Empire cannot be assured unless faith in the efficacy of individual enterprise is maintained, and that only a reinspired Conservatism can defend our people against the growing tendency of politicians to encroach upon spheres of activity which lie outside their province. It is the business of politicians to establish and assure good government, in its widest possible sense, so that their people may have a clear field to achieve industrial, commercial and economic efficiency. It is not the business of politicians to concern themselves with attempting to attain that efficiency by direct statutory action. In the Imperial field, the group is strong for immigration, but so far its practical plans to that end do not seem to have advanced beyond “demanding” the. development of the home and Imperial markets by: (1) the creation of conditions favourable to redistribution of population; (2) the closest possible coordination of Imperial defences, foreign affairs, economic, monetary and trade policy; and (3) the use of tariffs. None of which is new.