LABOUR AND TARIFFS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 95, 19 October 1931, Page 7

LABOUR AND TARIFFS

REPLY TO SNOWDEN

QUESTION OF TWO EVILS

LONDON; 17th October

"Mr. Snowden knows the statement that the Labour men voted for immediate tariffs to be ' a travesty ,of the facts," said Mr. Arthur Henderson at Accrington. "There was never any question of the majority of the Cabinet members approving of the principle of tariffs. It was simply a question of the lesser of two evils.

"Mr. Snowden evidently wants to commit his ex-colleagues to every tentative suggestion during long and complicated conversations. Why does ho not apply tho same standards to Mr. Eamsay MacDouald's statements?"

Mr. W. Graham at Edinburgh declared that all the majority of the Cabinet members said was that they would rather support a small revenue tariff than a dole cut. They also insisted that such a choico was utterly unnecessary, and later abandoned tho whole idea of a tariff.

Mr. Snowden, in a letter to the electorate, said that the Opposition's election manifesto had no relation to the present national emergency. "The same men," he said, "who have issued the Labour Party appeal against tariffs, proposed and voted in the late Labour Cabinet for the immediate imposition of tariffs."