BRITISH SHIPPING

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 142, 12 December 1935, Page 11

BRITISH SHIPPING

UNECONOMIC COMPETITION

P. & 0. DIRECTOR'S PLEA

United Press Association—by Eloctrlc Tele-

graph—Copyright. LONDON, December 11. The Hon. Alexander Shaw, chairman and managing director of,the Peninsular and Orient Steam Navigation Company, at the annual meeting of the company drew attention to the unfavourable effect of the meat restrictions and pointed out that the shipping industry was among those deserving of favourable consideration when the | national policy of restriction was applied. . Referring to air mails, he said that the needs of the world would best be served by co-operation of air and sea. The directors were watching air developments, but it would be rash to assume that sea transport was destined to be supplanted by air, forcing shipping companies to preserve a large part of their assets by switching to the air. ■ ■ ■ •■■.-• He declared that if the Governments of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand wished to retain any Empire trans-Pacific service they must assist those who ior so many years had upheld the British flag at such a grave loss. If the Canadian-Australian-New Zealand ,line were allowed to perish it was unlikely to be replaced by another British concern. • The problem went beyond the interests of commercial concerns or the economic loss involved for the Dominions through abandoning their shipping. It went to the roots of our Imperial position. "MUST MEET SUBSIDY WITH SUBSIDY." Shipping policies of foreign countries had inflated world tonnage in excess of the present and probable future requirements of world trade, resulting in an uneconomic level of freights, Mr. Shaw continued. The cure was international rationalisation, but the efforts of the Chamber of Shipping in that direction had met with a chilly answer from important maritime Powers. Britain must show that she was resolved to obtain fair play for British shipping. If argument failed they must meet subsidy with subsidy and restriction with restriction. The proportion of British shipping serving home ports declined year after year. The facts had been brought to the attention of the Empire and British Governments, yet so far as liners were concerned not a single official hand had been stretched to save them from the inevitable results of economic I warfare with Powers prepared to spend the taxpayers' money lavishly on a I mercantile marine not required by their own or world trade, but merely as ancillary to naval ambitions or the desire to extinguish sections of.economic trade which Great Britain had built up.