Cap Manufacturers Prepare For Production Boom

Northern Advocate, 19 December 1945, Page 7

Cap Manufacturers Prepare For Production Boom

(Special, 11 a.m.)

Two important wartime controls will be abolished in Britain at the end of the year. In future, motor cars may be bought without a license and anybody will again be able to open a retail shop without a license.

Newspapers, however, are to continue to remain at their present wartime size.

The Minister for War Transport (Mr Barnes) stated that in view of the increased production anticipated in 1946, the system, of licenses to acquire all types of motor vehicles will be discarded. The sale of second-hand public service vehicles, such as ’buses, will likewise no longer be controlled. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has undertaken, on behalf of their principal members, that during the first six months of 1946 half the output of new cars and onethird of the output of commercial vehicles will be devoted to export. As a result of this announcement, British motor manufacturers are preparing for a car production boom. Kepresentatives of the industry are agreed that the decision will give an incalculable boost to British car production. PLAN AHEAD Sir Eric Rootes, president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, and deputy-chairman of the Rootes group, said: “It means that distribution will soon be functioning more normally.’’ Mr E. H. Seaward, managing-director of Morris Motors, said that the main benefit would be that it would enable oroduction planners to get to work. “We have never been able to discover exactly what demand for cars exists in Britain today,” he said. “We shall now be able to plan ahead.” The decision to allow anyone to open a retail shop without a license was announced by Sir Stafford Cripps, who said the Government was ending the Location of Retail Businesses Order, and was closing the register of withdrawn traders. He added that the order had been kept on to help ex-traders as a class, particularly war disabled, though not ex-servicemen as such. ' “There are now many ex-servicemen whose interests we all desire to regard and who have been prevented from trading because they are neither ex-traders nor war disabled,” he said.

Ex-traders had had six months to take up their former businesses. Exservicemen must now be allowed to enter the field. NO MORE NEWSPRINT

The campaign by Members of Parliament and others to secure increased newsprint to enable newspapers to be enlarged, continues to meet with no success.

Shortage of advertising space in newspapers is not, according to Sir Stafford Cripps, acting as a deterrent to reconversion of industry. He denied a suggestion by Sir Joynson Hicks, who asked in the House of Commons whether he would consider

LONDON, Dec. 18,

releasing some available reserves 6f newsprint to facilitate the exchange of labour and commodities. Sir Joynson Hicks also asked whether Sir Stafford was aware that by resuming pre-war imports of newsprint from countries outside the dollar area, Britain would increase the amount available for consumption by one third, and why he did not adopt this course.

“It is not possible in view of the present position of foreign exchange to import'newsprint from those countries where it is available,” was the reply.