FARM PRICES

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 August 1946, Page 7

FARM PRICES

DISCONTENT IN BRITAIN FAMILY LABOUR NOT TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT PROTEST MEETINGS ARRANGED (Rec. 12.25 p.m.) LONDON, Aug. 8. Following the refusal of the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Tom Williams, to meet the National Farmers’ Union on the revision of farm prices, two of Surrey’s war agricultural executive committees “temporarily suspended activity.” Protest meetings are being held and a ftll meeting of the Cotincil of the National Farmers’ Union will be held on August 15,. to which 250 chairmen and vice-chairmen of county branches are being invited. Mr. Geoffrey Browne, National Farmers’ Union economic officer, defining the issue, said the Minister’s recent revision of the produce prices, based on the high wages for agricultural labourers’ did not make provision for the labour of the members of a farmer’s family.

The farmers’ debating group of the East Suffolk branch telegraphed the National Farmers’ Union: “We deplore the failure of the negotiations. Farmers of East Anglia are seething with discontent under the grave injustice. We are ready to back you to the limit.” At Newbury, Berkshire, farmers’ wives and daughters joined their menfolk in a protest meeting, which carried unanimously a resolution that “unless the Government accedes to the just demands of the National Farmers’ Union by August 15, union headquarters should immediately order the farmers to withhold, all supplies.”