Britain Out To Regain Trade In Woollens

Northern Advocate, 22 August 1945, Page 3

Britain Out To Regain Trade In Woollens

(Special. 11.15) BRADFORD, Aug. 21 A great effort to increase Britain's rate of wool consumption in order to satisfy urgent civilian clothing requirements at home and abroad, is following immediately on the close of war and is actively supported by the authorities. Clothing needs have been given labour priority second only to food and building requirements, and the wool consuming trades will expect to recruit much labour as a result of official announcements that 1.000,000 munition workers are to be released for civilian occupation in the next two months and that 1,000.000 men will be demobilised before the end of the year. The wool consuming trades of Britain are out to disprove a contention circulated in certain Quarters abroad that they have been so depleted by the war effort that they will require years to recover their former position. If the return of labour is up to expectations, they hope to achieve in months a degree of recovery which might in other circumstances, occupy a much longer period. New Zealand woolgrowers will learn with interest that Britain is oiyt to recover, at the earliest moment, her position. Arrangements are already in hand to reopen, as soon as labour supply warrants such a course, mills temporarily closed under wartime schemes of production.

Cut In Clothes Ration

A great incentive to Britain to increase her wool consumption as quicldv as possible, lies in an official hint that it may not be possible to maintain the domestic clothes ration at its present level in the coming period. This is an unwelcome shock to the public who expected that any change in ration at this stage would be upward rather than downward, but the fact is that for some time past, Britain has been living partly on trade stocks of civilian clothing which now are reaching exhaustion point, although production has not yet had a chance to rise from the low levels reached under war conditions. It takes some time for new production to reach the retail counter and, meanwhile. there is the new clothes ration period to face. Whether the ration will be definitely reduced is not yet known, but if so. it will be only h temporary phase. It will represent part of the price Britain is paying for the scale of her war effort, but the price is not regarded as unduly heavy. From the Dominion wool producers' angle of interest, it may safely be suggested that Britain's wool consumption has touched rock-bottom and any change at the moment is likely to be in an upward direction. The figures of stock on hand are not available but it is believed that the spot supply position gives no cause for immediate anxiety, especially as the end of the war should enable the authorities, if they so desire, to call on stocks hitherto held as emergency reserves. Mills are virtually promised all the wool they can' handle, although strict control is exercised of the direction in which 'wool is used and the authorities have made it clear that part of any increase in civilian production must be made available for the export trade to the Dominions and other customer countries.