POST-WAR PROBLEMS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 28 June 1943, Page 5

POST-WAR PROBLEMS

LABOUR TARTY’S POLICY MR MOR-tISON’S APPEAL Rugby, June 27. “J believe that if we were to come out of this Government ir. the middle of this great war and if we were to break the electoral truce ourselves and proceed deliberately with almost malice aforethought to break up the political unity of the country young men in the Eighth Army would want to know why politicians were squabbling at home while they were doing the fighting,” the Home Secretary, Mr Herbert Morrison, said when addressing a London Labour Party meeting. Mr Morrison said th?.l while Labour could not put the ‘dash” they would like in the Coalition Government they were not prevented from expressing their minds or from crusading and trying to get the country to see the troubles that were coming at the end of the war if steps were not taken to circumvent them. He appealed to Labour to devote much more time to securing a transformation of the imperfect social order into a better social order. There was need for more public ownership and public control of production, but control must be constructive and helpful, not merely bureaucratic. “In our financial policy after the war,” continued Mr Morrison, “there must be no financial irresponsibility. We must draw up a scheme of priorities and decide how to spend our money and then spend it fruitfully and without waste. The financial plan must be expansive, not restrictive. There must be no hidebound acceptance. The old idea of finance must dominate production. There must not be sharp changes in the value of money, no sharp inflation or manipulation c f people’s savings. The war had shown what could be done under extraordinary conditions and if it were possible to pursue extreme expansionist policies in war, they could certainly pursue moderate expansionist policies in peace. What had happened was that the Government had made the banking and finar.cial system its servant, not its master, as it had been in 1931. “Labour favours expansionist policies and proclaims that fact,” Mr Morrison concluded, “but with the example of wartime finance before it, Labour knows very well how to pursue expansionist policies while keeping the pound steady.”—B.O.W.