UGLY OLD ORDER

Grey River Argus, 3 December 1943, Page 7

UGLY OLD ORDER

to Defeat It !

(The “Record”, journal of the British Transport and General Workers’ Union says:)

“We have never under-rated the strength and influence of those Who are opposed to social and economic change. They are powerfully entrenched, and When they do sally forth with their weapons of halftruths, falsehoods and fallacies, sharp, ened by their own hatred of change and fears of the consequences to themselves, the Labour Movement will have all its work cut out to prevent a stampede back to the ugly old oi’der of booms and depi’essions, unemployment and misery, great contrasts of wealth and poverty, and the sordid scramble for world trade stirring up hatreds and jealousies amongst the nations and driving them to war. HOW CAN THEY BE DEFEATED *?

By the ordinary ’ people arming themselves with facts and arguments, learning how to use their knowledge and having the courage to apply it. Men and women who understand the money racket will not be frightened by those who point to an estimated national debt of £20,000,000,000 and its annual burden of £600,000,000 interest, and ask: Where is the money for the new social order to come from?

They will tell those financial bogeymen that the money, or, if you like, credit, which started the war machine in motion has not been destroyed by being spent. Guns, shells, p anes and warships may be destroyed, but not the money which financed the effort to bring them into being. It still exists. It is used over ana over again to keep the war machine running, functioning as a medium for the circulation of commodities and also as a commodity, itself to be lent at so much per cent.

In the nation as a whole, there is not and never has been, any shortage of money. A great deal of our unemployment in the past was due to the fact that those who control the monetary system followed a policy, which hampered schemes for industrial expansion. That must not be allowed to happen in the future. People who understand that their social needs can be adequately satisfied only by the fullest possible productiq and equitable distribution of goods and services will not be ignorant of the part which money must be ma'de to play in the process. Nor will they be side-tracked or discouraged by those who argue that because we have lost a great part of our overseas capital investments the idea of a better Britain after the war is only a pipe-dream.

We have Sir Ernest Benn arguing on these lines in .an article in the “Daily Telegraph” for May 7. He ac.

cuses what he calls “New Worldmongers” for raising hopes that can never be realised. “I have yet to learn from any of them,” he says, “how they propose to feed us.” We are not scared by Sir Ernest Benn’s spectre of hunger. . Neither he nor anypne else ‘will go hungry when food is. not only grown, but made available to the people. And that, surely, is one of the objects of the new social order. This is not to suggest, of course, that Great Britain can, or should even try to grow all the food she needs, although, in passing, it might be of interest to Sir Ernest Benn, who believes we can produce only a quarter of the food we need, to mention that many people, from Robt. Blatchford forty years ago to Lord Addison in 1938, have proved that by the adoption of a wise agricultural policy, Great Britain could have produced a great deal more food than she has been able to do so by the policy she followed.

But that is by the way. While Great Britain can make a useful contribution to the solving of the food problem, no one outside of a lunatic asylum expects her to try to feed herself. Any attempt to do so would destroy at the start all prospects of the New World Economy which is necessary for real peace and social secur. ity. '

The social and economic problem of Great Britain is part of a world problem and must be examined as such.

No one* country can be made selfsupporting, but all nations by pooling their knowledge and resources, by cooperation, by each contributing according to its ability and receiving according to its needs, can adequately feed, clothe and house all the people in the world and provide them with ail the amenities of a decent and wellordered life.

There is enough in the world for a11..N0 one, not even the “Old Worldmongers,” will deny that, but these people, either because of their vested interests, or fear or hatred of change, or because they are simply incapable of seeing economic problems as wond problems, will put all sorts of di culties in the way of creating the con. fidence and the international organisation and machinery necessary for ;the achievement of the world order that all reasonably-minded people desire.

To-day the “Old World-mongers’ are muttering and murmuring and sneering at “Utopian dreams, but after the war we may have to meet much stronger opposition. Our job, the job of ordinary people everywhere is to be prepared.

The organising of the world order which will make available to the people the goods they have, produced is not impossible. It has long been the aim of the Trade Union Movement, wherever trade unions have been allowed to exist, and the ideal of all people of goodwill.