EMPIRE FREE TRADE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 9

EMPIRE FREE TRADE

POSITION MADE CLEAK

ORMSBY-GORE EMPHATIC

British Official Wireless. (Received Ist March, 11 a.m.)

RUGBY, 2Sth February,

The strong opposition of the Conservatives to the recently-formed United Empire Party, conducted by Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook, with Empire Free Trade as its basis, continues, and last night Mr. Ormsby-Gore, Colonial Under-Secretary in the late Government, said that in no circumi/*.ances could i\e join \ifte new p»\-ty or t.-iport it° poLey. That policy, he said, had not received the- support of a. single Government or a single iiading statesman in any part of the overseas Empire. Great Britain's Dominions were all determined to become industrial, manufacturing countries and wore no longer content to be regarded merely as producers of raw materials and they would not tolerate outside interference with their fiscal autonomy. As to the Colonies, he' pointed out that in Ceylon, Fiji, Ehodosia, Cyprus, Malta, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Barbadoes, , Jamaica, Trinidad-, British Guiana, British Honduras, and Mauritius the determination of fiscal policy rested with unofficial members of the local Legislatures and not with the Colonial Office, but even in the more directly controlled Colonies there- would be tho most dire results and reactions if by Government action at Home, the wishes of tho local inhabitants were over-ridden. EFFECT ON COLONIES. Free Trad© within the Empire, in the new Party's sense of the term, would destroy, the free port of Singapore within1 a year.' Such a policy was impossible for British Malaya, tho trade of which was in rubber and tin and which could produce no foods for itself and must trade with all the world. The same consideration applied to the Gold Coast, which provided half the world's supplies of cocoa and therefore required foreign markets wherever, chocolate was consumed. In the whole of the' British West African Colonies an Empire Free Trade policy would do infinite damage to one of tho most valuable and increasing markets for British manufactures. Any future Imperial , trade policy must, in hia view, follow the example of many of the Dominions ji making specific mutual arrangements, limited to two or ■ more individual parts of tho Empire, instead of seeking to use artificial uniformity.