LABOUR ON DEFENCE POLICY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 18 June 1936, Page 12

LABOUR ON DEFENCE POLICY

WHERE DOES IT STAND ? Some pertinent questions as to its attitude to defence were put to the British Labour Party by 4 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Neville Chamberlain, in winding up the debate on the Budget in the House of Commons. The Government, said Mr, Chamberlain, was entitled to ask the Labour Party where it stood on the question of defence. Were its members in favour of putting the defences in order or were they not? They had not told the House, with one exception, in what respect the foreign policy of the Government was defective and how it could otherwise have been conducted and have saved the necessity of rebuilding the defences to-day. The only exception in that regard had been Mr Pethick-Lawrence, who said in one single sentence what the foreign policy of the Government should have been. He said: “The right policy would have been for the Government to prove at whatever expense that it did not pay to be an aggressor.” What did that mean? Of course Tt must mean the provision of such an amount of force as would show an aggressor that it did not pay to be an aggressor. Mr Chamberlain wanted to know if that was the policy of the Labour Party. Was it prepared to go to whatever expense might be necessary to prove to Signor Mussolini or Herr Hitlet, let us say, that war did not pay? Unless it was it could not criticise the Budget.