GRAVE MENACE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 12, 16 January 1933, Page 8

GRAVE MENACE

STATE-AIDED SHIPPING;

A COMPANY'S COMPLAINT]

(From "The Post's" Representative.)! LONDON, Bth December. In his address to shareholders at th«i annual meeting of the P. and O. Company, the chairman (the Hon. Alexander Shaw) made special reference to> the unfairness of State-aided shipping, and mentioned that Civil Service men. on leave from India are among those who help to make the lot of British: shipping companies more difficult.

"It is comparatively easy for foreign) competitors to turn out a few spectacular vessels which would be entirely uneconomic except for huge Government' subsidies," he said. "The P. and O. Company has no such aid- We have to maintain a steady trade with regular; sailings, and to do it in the face of hard economic facts.

'•'We have no subsidy properly so; called—none at all. What we receive for the carriage of mails is merely, a payment, barely adequate, '• for definite services rendered; and it is really a misnomer to call it aTsubsidy. (Hear, hear).

"Others, abroad, are in a more favoured position. Indeed, matters hava reached such a pitch that Great Britaia almost alone among the nations has a mercantile marine which is run on ordinary economic lines. In every singla trade in which the P. and O. .Company, is engaged it is faced with the competition of foreign vessels which have beea built with the aid of foreign Exchequers and are run with the assistance of very, large subsidies. <

"Further, when we look round wo see everywhere foreign nations which! close their coastal trade to British shipa while 'the coasts of Britain and our inter-Empire trade- remain open to all comers on equal terms. We find also that ships of foreign countries, highly; subsidised by their Governments, are every year cutting deeper and deeper, into British trades. This is a new and! grave menace to the most essential of all British industries. 'British, shipowners to not fear economic eompeti-< tion from any country in the world, but' it is asking the impossible to expect, them, either in cargo or liner trades, t» go on for ever standing up unaided t» face what is in. fact a carefully deveK oped form of economic warfare. THE INDIAN SERVICE. "Of many possible examples of thesubsidised competition which the P. and! 0. Company has to face I choose one' alone—and do so- certainly in ~no spirit: of hostility either to the foreign lin» concerned or to the great nation whosa flag it flies.

"Not very long ago an Italian, newspaper boasted that an Italian line had! achieved a predominance in the Bombay trade. That vaunting statement :is hardly accurate, but it is significant when we consider of what that trad* consists. It consists, above all, in the carriage of British subjects coming home to Britain on leave, or returning to India after it. The Italian Press prints ,lists of such people who travel foreign and it naturally gloats over a highly placed civil servant or soldier who travdfa in an Italian subsidised' ship. Meantime the1 P. and O. Company have to struggle along in the face of the economic blizzard without tha aid of any such Government umbrella;;, and the P. and O. stockholders, in their capacity of taxpayers, have the privilege of paying the fares of those very, gentlemen who patronise foreign; vessels which, by virtue of the lavish: subsidies showered upon them, are eni gaged in the endeavour to oust British; ships from the trade of a. British port* "I do not wish.to Jbe misunderstood* We have alt of us nothing but-admir*-ation for the endurance, the patience,the skill, and the labour -which the soldiers and civil servants of Britain give so gallantly and ungrudgingly to the service of the great dependency ofi India. But not all of them-ican have | reflected that the mercantile marine is the indispensable link of Empire in. peace and in.war, and that "without it the Empire could not have beeifccreated, and could not continue to exist. If! they consider the problem in that lightthey will no longer throw their weight into the scales against their fellow countrymen. Bather, I believe, theyj will rally to the aid of those, ; who, ia the teeth of the worst storm her ships have ever encountered, are striving t» keep the Bed Ensign of Britain flying on the Seven Seas." (Hear, hear).