BRITAIN AS DUMPING GROUND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 30 May 1930, Page 5

BRITAIN AS DUMPING GROUND

MR BALDWIN URGES SAFEGUARDING MR MACDONALD APPEALS FOR UNITY (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, 28th May. The debate on unemployment in the House of Commons was opened by Mr Baldwin, who declared that anything less drastic than safeguarding of industries by duties would not meet the case. He agreed that high tariffs were a bar to business, but they could not get those tariffs reduced while the British market was the dumping ground to which all cheap goods could be sent. Safeguarding of Home markets was the essential basis for the development of markets within the Empire and reduction in foreign tariffs had resulted from bargaining between one protected country and another. 'Mr MacDonald declared that in countries under protection, unemployment figures had 'mounted more rapidly than.was the case here. Twelve months ago the problem was one of home conditions in relation to normal foreign markets. That was not the problem to-day. Let them take any industrial country and it would be found that world causes had knocked the bottom out of prices and every country dependent on export trade had suffered. He instanced Germany where unemployment figures had : risen from 1,700,000 to 2,700,000, and the United States which a year ago had practically no unemployed and where there were now between five and six million. They were facing a totally new problem and the Lord Privy Seal, Mr Thomas, had done an enormous amount of work to relieve the situation. He. detailed some of the schemes put in hand and asked if they could not, in the face of the special growth of unemployment, undertake emergency measures to tide over the period which every authority which had been consulted agreed was temporary. As soon as confidence was re-established orders now withheld would be placed and they were just as likely to have a period ci immediate boom in the provision of large schemes. Municipalities were held up sometimes by technical difficulties, and he asked if the parties in the House of Commons could not join in measures to expedite such work. Municipalities also might be encouraged to do more than at present, and the Government proposed to summon a conference of representatives of municipal authorities. The question of unemployment might well become a subject for co-operative activity.

SIR OSWALD MOSLEY’S SCHEME

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, 29th May.

During the latter stages of the Unemployment debate Sir Oswald Mosley, who recently resigned from the Government because Cabinet had objected to the proposals he had made for the drastic handling of unemployment, gave the details of his scheme. This included measures which he claimed would employ 800,000 men at an annual cost of £10,000,000, and which involved an emergency retirement pension to persons over 00 years, the raising of the school leaving age, and interest on a big loan for special relief works.

The Lord Privy Seal, Mr J. H. Thomas, Minister responsible for employment, analysed and criticised Sir Oswald Mosley’s proposals in detail, and said that they had been carefully examined by Cabinet Ministers and rejected by those prejudiced in their favour.