EMPIRE MIGRATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20452, 5 July 1928, Page 8

EMPIRE MIGRATION.

Mr Ramsay .MacDonald made a frank admission, in his presidential address to the British Commonwealth Labour Conference, that the Labour Party at Home has seen the error of its former attitude in regard to migration. It is now recognised by it, he says, that greater fluidity in respect of the popu-

lation is necessary. It is, of course, evident that the British Commonwealth figures largely in his argument. His observations are welcome as they may contribute to the attainment of a solidarity of effort in bringing about a better distribution of the Empire’s population. They are to be commended to the attention of the Labour Party in New Zealand, to which his statement that Labour must have a positive policy of responsibility and not a negative policy of selfishness may also be usefully directed. The Labour Party in this country is not so ready as the Labour Party at Home to recognise that the distribution of population throughout the Empire, in such a way as to prevent congestion in one part while other parts are conspicuous for their vacant spaces and are not sufficiently peopled to admit of the development of their resources, is a prime need of the British Commonwealth. Mr Ben Turner, speaking at the conference, said that the question of migration must necessarily be of cardinal importance to Labour and pointed out that a decrease in emigration from Great Britain since the war had had the effect of intensifying the evil of unemployment there. The founder of the Salvation Army expressed the considered judgment forty years ago that, “ of all the remedies propounded for the immediate and permanent relief of distress arising from lack of employment, emigration still holds the field.” To some of the members of the Labour Party in New Zealand the idea of Empire itself is anathema, and any proposal that can be described as Imperialistic receives on that ground prompt condemnation by them. But the outlook of persons who subscribe to a view of this description is short sighted and foolish to a degree. They would have this Dominion endeavour to live for itself alone, although that would be the best way of condemning it to a non-progressive and distinctly uncertain future. This is precisely what Mr Ramsay MacDonald aptly characterises as a negative policy of selfishness. It is satisfactory to think that the British Commonwealth Labour Conference is not likely to exhibit much patience with such lack of vision, such narrowness of outlook, and such inability to realise what the well-being of the Empire as a whole means to its various constituent parts.