"GOOD ELECTION CRY"

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 107, 2 November 1923, Page 8

"GOOD ELECTION CRY"

THE PROTECTION POLICY I

ANOTHER LABOUR DOUBTER.

DZJSRJSET

(Received 2nd November, 1.30 p.m.)

LONDON, Ist November. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, speaking at a luncheon tendered him by his Labour colleagues, said the most important event since he went to the Levant \va3 Mr. Baldwin's change of battle tactics. He was uncertain what Mr. Baldwin meant, or how far it was Mr. Baldwin's own or the Cabinet's new policy. Had Mr. Baldwin nailed the Protectionist flag to the masthead, or only half-mast high? Was it to be out-and-out Protection, or merely points of it, carefully selected not to save the country but to give the Tories a good election try? The unemployment evil in Britain had lasted for four years, but the Conservatives had not previously suggested Protection ag a remedy. Mr. Baldwin, was like some of the Labourites, who, when they couldn't see a way out of their troubles, declared a general strike.

Protection, Mr. Macdonald said, was not a cure for unemployment. It was merely a diversion, a hollow and ineffective proposition, a magnificent method of side-tracking a serious problem. The coming fight would not be Protection v. Free Trade, but Protection v. Labour policy. On the whole,' he favoured the open market; but even if they had Protection, there would still be all the problems centring in the Labour programme. Th e present state of unemployment could only be remedied by the reparations policy which Labour had advocated for four years. Labour aimed at the development of Britain and the protection of our own market.

Referring to migration, he said that if the Dominions only took our skilled men and women, they would weaken instead ot strengthening Britain's vitality of industries.