Strong Attack On Socialists Raises Storm

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 October 1947, Page 5

Strong Attack On Socialists Raises Storm

LONDON, October 11.

Repercussions are expected to follow a strong attack upon the Government in the Conservative Pdrty organ Tory Challenge, by a member of the Government Planning Board, Sir Graham Cunningham, its former head of the munitions section of the Ministry of Supply. The article, which is headed, “Is this Utopia?” accuses the Government of “incompetence and doctrinaire treatment of industry,” and calls on the Socialists “to apply themselves more to keeping British industry alive than to pipe dreams of better worlds to come.”

The Fuel Crisis

Continuing, the article-claims that the fuel crisis should not have, arisen and that when it did arise the Government had to call on industrialists to pull it out of the mess. It claims that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Dr Hugh Dalton) ignored the frequent warnings of the effect of the dwindling American loan but had to admit that these warnings were justified by cancelling convertibility. Sir (graham Cunningham expresses the view that the only way to induce the workers to produce more is to allow industry to work out its own salvation “instead of having to /answer to dozens of lowly-paid bureaucrats on dozens of forms.” Replacement issue

The industrial correspondent of the News Chronicle states that it is being strongly criticised by Labour members, who may demand Sir Graham Cunningham’s replacement on the planning board by a member more sympathetic to the Government’s aims and objects. A question is likely to be tabled for the Minister of Economic Affairs (Sir Stafford Cripps) when Parliament reassembles.

Sir Graham Cunningham, in an interview following publication of the article, said: “I was appointed to the board to represent British industry and I was perfectly free to express my views.”