POST-WAR POLICY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 6 April 1943, Page 6

POST-WAR POLICY

VIEWS OF LABOUR LEADER Rugby, April 3. Mr Herbert Morrison, speaking at the Labour Party conference at Leeds to-day, reaffirmed his allegiance to the Labour Party. “Whether it is in alliance or alone I am of it, for it, with it and will so remain.” He urged careful consideration of the Prime Minister’s recent broadcast which “gave us all something to think about in the post-war political field ” He added: “It is good to think—but not good to jump to precipitate conclusions.” Mr Morrison expressed the view that the fundamental post-war question was how the community was to get its living, and went on: “We shall have to solve this problem in all its three parts—how to get full employment, how to increase productive efficiency in industry, and how to spread increased production widely and fairly. “Also in the post-war world we may have to face the fact of a permanent shrinkage in the markets of some of our older industries.” He said that no policy, however expansionist, would necessarily expand all industries and added: “If central organisation is necessary, whether for contraction, stability or expansion, the state must exercise genuine and effective control of it.”

Mr Morrison said the public control he visualised must be —“and given the - right men and the right methods it can be”—constructive, enlivening and animating. On the high industrial controls he thought there should be four things represented — expert knowledge of industry, of labour, of the needs and interests of consumers, and the State.

The State should be represented by officers specially trained to understand and work with industry, and to know that their duty is to watch the interest of the community as a whole. If they had bias, they should be con-sumer-minded rather than producerminded in order to ensure efficient public-spirited conduct