PROBLEM OF RATES.

Evening Star, Issue 21004, 19 January 1932, Page 9

PROBLEM OF RATES.

TO THE EDITOR, Sir.—The municipal rates due this montli are going to be more than a problem to many of us this year, and one can perhaps imagine the prospects and thoughts of a man very hard put to it to earn money or receiving food from a relief depot who is faced with finding something like £8 or £lO for rates. What I wish to draw attention to is a source of municipal income which is entirely overlooked, and which would, if taxed, enable the councils to excuse those in the above dire position from paying rates for one or more years. I refer to the exemption of religious edifices and certain church grounds from the payment of rates. 1 will not here go into the justice of granting such exemption in other times, but ask why, when times are so desperate, these churches, of all denominations, should not pay rates? The voluntary offer on the part of the various religious sects to' pay rates for a few years would have gone far to rehabilitate those ecclesiastical bodies, in the eyes of the majority of people who very evidently suspect them nowadays, and it would nave tended to spike the guns of such as “E.W.F.,” who has attacked and will attack them on this score as well as others. They, the religious officials, as well as the laymen, had a greater chance in another direction some time ago, when I pleaded for the right of free speech, and they were silent. When so timid (to put it mildly) in regard to fundamental principles, it is perhaps impossible to expect them to make a really humane move when that would touch their pockets. The property held by the churches throughout the land, often the choicest -obtainable, gifts usually from (misguided) Governments, escape municipal rates running into millions of pounds over a period of years. The same organisations hold other property throughout the land, from which they draw rents and revenue. Then there is the glaring and shameful spectacle of large, „costly, roomy, and comfortable buildings everywhere standing empty and locked up and jmused nearly six days a week. We talk of money sent overseas as partly responsible for our present financial condition, especially that to. foreign countries, but none have the wit to mention or condemn the steady stream of cash going overseas, without even the return in goods or otherwise, in part or whole, each year to maintain costly and, largely futile missionary enterprises, Certain shops or businesses are singled out andcondemned because they do, nnu not, contribute sufficiently towards unemployed relief, But 1 the chief and at the same time the richest offender is left uncriticised. I am aware that the man in the street is slow to think for himself, and he is content to move slowly, but the aspects of the matter touched on here are so glaring that one despairs of citizens being able ever to do anything effective to remedy the evils they have to put up with.—l am, .etc., E.W.F,, January, 18.