Socialism Blamed For Britain’s National Disaster

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 September 1947, Page 6

Socialism Blamed For Britain’s National Disaster

LONDON, September 27. Warning his hearers to be ready “should an election be sprung onus at any moment next year,” Mr Winston Churchill, in a speech to a Conservative Party rally in London, said that all the world was staggered by the sudden fall of Britain from the high position won in the first hour of her history. He recalled that he predicted the result of the General Election in 1945 would be a national disaster. He had not believed that this would have proved true so quickly. “Our misguided fellow countrymen” had achieved disaster through their incompetence and arrogance, their hordes of officials, thousands of regulations and gross mismanagement of affairs, large and small. “What has happened to Britain so far is only the foretaste of what is to come,” said Mr Churchill. Cause of Emigration

“Under, Socialism, with all its malice, class jealousy and crippling of diligence, initiative and enterprise, it will not be possible for more than two-thirds of the present population to live in this isle. That is why there is all this talk of emigration and why young men are turning their eyes overseas, hoping to find the chance to make their way which is denied them here. The Government is trying to fill their places with displaced persons; I will not speak of these people without sympathy, but how terrible is our situation when so many of our best and most active people wish to leave Britain, and we become the repository of Europe’s unhappy wreckage 5> Mr Churchill said that the Socialists were trying to spread the false impression that the period between the wars had been dark and miserable for Britain. He claimed- that, apart from the first Socalist Administration, it had been a period of almost unequalled expansion in the life of wage-earners. The Government boasted of the many Bills passed by this Parliament, but none of these conferred any benefit on wage-earners except those which were prepared by the National Coalition “and proclaimed by me in the four-year plan of 1943.” Mr Attlee in Reply

The Prime Minister (Mi- Attlee), in a speech at a Labour rally at Leicester, accused Mr Winston Churchill of exploiting the Government’s difficulties.

“It is very different from the wartime Churchill who exhorted the people to bear bravely their inevitable hardships, and who is now apparently exhorting them to whine and blame,” said Mr Attlee. “He knows perfectly well that our difficulties are not due to the Labour Government. His tactics. are rather old-fashioned. He does not take account of the new political intelligence in Britain.”

Mr Attlee said his opponents had no policy to set against Labour. The Government had gone ahead with nationalisation to remedy defects in essential industries on which the economic future of Birtain depended. Mr Attlee said the Opposition’s constant barrage against the Government did not’affect the Government’s position, but people abroad did not always understand the freedom of criticism rightly allowed in Britain. Some did not realise the motive of attacks on the Government. The Opposition press and speakers created the wrong impression abroad that Britain was a grey and miserable place, whereas visitors who came fo see foi' themselves told him that they found the people vigorous and cheerful.

Against Labour Mr Attlee said that apart from the Government’s own press, “our own great Daily Herald, and apart from some newspapers which took a reasonable, balanced view, the great body of the British press was against the Labour movement. Mr Attlee said the Government was not going to adopt wholesale regimentation, and did not believe in it, but unless the Government was to use regimentation, there must be some incentive other than the profit motive. He said he could not see why the motive of service to the community should not operate in peace as in war. There was no easy way out of Britain’s difficulties, and the problems came down to the attitude of the individual citizen.