EMPIRE FREETRADE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20965, 3 March 1930, Page 8

EMPIRE FREETRADE

OPPOSITION BY CONSERVATIVES. CAMPAIGN CONTINUED. (British Official Wireless,) (JJnlted Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) RUGBY, Febntary 28. The strong opposition of the Conservatives to the recently-formed United Empire Party, conducted by Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook, with Empire Freetrade as its basis, continues, and last night Mr Ormsby-Gore, Colonial Under-Seeretary in the late Government, said that in no circunffetances could he join the new party or support its policy. That policy, he said, had not received the support of a single Government or a single leading statesman in any part of the overseas Empire. Great Britain’s dominions were all determined to become industrial manufacturing countries, and were no longer content to be regarded merely as producers of ' raw materials, and they would not tolerate outside interference with their fiscal outonomy. As to the colonies, he pointed out that in Ceylon, Fiji, Rhodesia, Cyprus, Malta, Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Barbadoes, Jamaica, Trindidad, British Guiana, British Honduras, and the Mauritius determination of the fiscal policy rested with the unofficial members of the local Legislatures, and not with the Colonial Office; but even in the more directly controlled colonies there would be most dire results and reactions if, by Government action at Home, the wishes of the local inhabitants were overridden. Freetrade within the Empire, in the new party’s sense of the term, would destroy the free port of Singapore within a year. Such a policy was impossible for British Malaya, whose trade was in rubber and tin, which could produce no foods for itself, and must trade with allthe world. The same consideration applied to the Gold Coast, which provided half the world’s supplies of cocoa, and therefore required foreign markets wherever chocolate was consumed. In the whole/ of the British West African Colonies an Empire Freetrade policy would do a infinite damage to one of the most valuable and increasing markets for British manufacturers. Any future Imperial trade policy must, in his view, follow the example of many of the dominions in making specific mutual arrangements, limited to two or more individual parts_ of the Empire, instead of seeking to use artificial uniformity.