WARNING TO TRADE UNIONISTS— Labour Facing Crucial Test In Britain

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 August 1949, Page 5

WARNING TO TRADE UNIONISTS— Labour Facing Crucial Test In Britain

LONDON, August 21 (Rec. 10 a.m.).—The General Council of the British Trades Union Congress today warned the Labour movement that it was facing the greatest struggle in its history. This Statement was made in a report which will be presented to the annual T.U.C. Congress on September 5. The report said the Labour movement’s crucial period would culminate in the next 12 months in the general elections. The T.U.C. claimed that financial and currency disorders alone were responsible for Britain’s economic difficulties.

“The magnitude of our industries’ efforts is strikingly emphasised by the rise in our overall production and the expansion in our export trade,” the report said.” Our country’s main problem is not a decline in productive power but is the financial and currency disorders which affect economy of all nations and bear with exceptional severity on our own country as the custodian and guardian of the interests of the sterling area.”

The report declared that these bal-ance-of-payment difficulties had complicated the operation of the Marshall Plan and had retarded Britain’s recovery.

The report criticised the “disruptive tendencies inside the Labour movement which have seriously endangered good relations among unions and have jeopardised the work of the Labour Government.”