London Empire Talks Not Full-Dress Conference

Northern Advocate, 1 September 1947, Page 4

London Empire Talks Not Full-Dress Conference

CANBERRA, This Day

BRITISH Commonwealth economic talks, which will take place in London this month, will not be a full-dress Imperial Conference This, however, does not rule out the possibility of such a conference being held later. The dollar-crisis talks have been arranged to take advantage of the presence of delegates for the meeting of the International Bank and Monetary Fund on September 11. The dollar discussions will follow the meeting.

Australia will be represented by Mr J. B. Brigden, economic adviser at the Australian Embassy in Washington.

explained and American suspicions soothed.

A report from Ottawa earlier stated that the Australian Minister of Immigration (Mr A. A. Calwell) said the Canadian Government was sympathetic with its suggestion that an Imperial Conference should be held specifically to discuss immigration. He believed that such a conference might be held in the not distant future to survey the human and material resources of the British Commonwealth.

Mr Brigden will be briefed by the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr S. G. McFarlane), now on his way back to Australia after long financial discussions in London.

\ It is stated that the Prime Minister (Mr Chifley) will not go to the London dollar talks, and that the New Zealand Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) is unlikely to attend.

Official sources state that there is no need for a full-dress conference on the dollar position at the moment, because all Dominion treasurers are thoroughly familiar with the position. N.Z. WILL BE REPRESENTED The acting Prime Minister (Mr Nash) said last night that New Zealand would be represented and the Government was considering membership of the delegation. A London message quotes the People as saying: “At last comes the news for which all Britain has been waiting.” The paper, like several other London Sunday newspapers, starts its front page with Canberra reports of the pending Commonwealth economic conference.

The Archbishop of York, in the York Diocesan Journal, called on the Prime Minister (Mr Attlee) to arrange a round-table conference of all political parties, to see if they could agree on “certain broad, but definite, lines of action” to deal with Britain’s economic crisis.

The Observer’s diplomatic correspondent says the talks may be expected to seek ways around the non-discrimin-ation article of the American loan agreement, so that Britain can buy the goods she needs from the sterling area. If the Dominions can quote lower prices than America, non-discrimin-ation does not apply. Other agreements, the correspondent says, may be concluded on the lines of the 1946 Canadian wheat agreement. “Tied” loans may be granted for British use only in the Dominions making the loans. SNYDER IN LONDON The Secretary for Overseas Trade (Mr J. Harold Wilson) is likely during the London talks to define in greater detail the "closer cooperation with Commonwealth countries” to which he referred at Geneva recently. The presence in London of the United States Secretary to the Treasury (Mr J. W. Snyder) will make if possible for the British position to be