PREMIER SLATES MR. CHURCHILL

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22314, 26 April 1947, Page 5

PREMIER SLATES MR. CHURCHILL

“OBSOLETE IMPERIALISM” DENOUNCED

BLAMED FOR RETURN TO GOLD STANDARD

(10 a.m.) LONDON, April 25. The Prime Minister, Mr. C. R. Attlee, addressing- the Scottish Trade Union Council, said he did not believe that either the British Commonwealth or the United States supported “obsolete Imperialism’’ which Mr. Churchill apparently advocated. He was replying to Mr. Churchill’s speech to the Primrose League on April IS in. which he stated that the Labour Government intended shamelessly to cast away India and squander the Empire.

■¥■ Mr. Attlee said: “Mr. Churchill ignores the great movement for selfgovernment which has been spreading throughout Asia for decades. He abandons the democratic principle for which we fought in the war.” Mr. Attlee defended Labour’s nationalisation plans and the manner in which it was using the American loan. , “I don’t subscribe to the dreary Jeremiahs who suggest that Britain is down and out,” he added. Mr. Attlee said Mr. Churchill had brought untold misery on the people ol j Britain. > “Mr. Churchill was the most disastrous Chancellor of the Exchequer ol the century,” he said. “It was Mr. ' Churchill who brought us back on the ! gold standard which led to the crisis ; in the coal industry. He signed, no 1 doubt in all ignorance, but much of our ' trouble to-day can be traced back to that error of ignorance and to his , simple trust of others in a field where 1 he had little knowledge.”