SOCIALISTS AND THE BANKS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21529, 29 December 1931, Page 12

SOCIALISTS AND THE BANKS

WHY VOTERS DESERTED LABOUR MR RUNCIMAN EXPLAINS. (From Ouk Own Correspondent.) LONDON, November 18. Socialists throughout the country continue to attribute their general defeat at the general elections to a statement that the money in the Post Office Savings Banks was in danger. This matter was referred to in the House of Commons when Mr Rhys Davies asked Mr Runclman what...he meant when, during the election, he spoke about the deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank being in jeopardy.—(Opposition cheers.) Mr Runciman (President of the Board of Trade), replying to Mr Rhys Davies, said that anxiety was felt during the election with regard not only to investments in the Post Office Savings Bank, but to all securities. Anxiety was also felt with regard to the declarations of the Labour Party on the banks. Mr Henderson, he believed, in a broadcast speech referred to the Post Office Savings Bank as an illustration of how the Labour. Party could embark on Oieir banking policy. “ Next day,” Mr Runeiman proceeded, “I pointed out at a public meeting in the North of England that there was no parallel between the joint stock banking system and the Post Office Savings Bank. “I also pointed out that the Post Office Savings Bank depended for its security and strength upon the credit of the United Kingdom. I am not responsible for any gloss put upon that statement in the newspapers. I saw the next day a well-known newspaper correspondent to whom I said that there was nothing to fear in regard to the safety of the Post Office .Savings Bank, and that those who had money in the Post Office Savings Bank might rest assured that they were not in danger Of losing it, and I said at the same time, let it be clearly understood that that is because the bank has at the back of it the entire and enormous resources of the British Government, and not the manner in which those funds had been operated.” SECURITY FOR POST OFFICE BANK. . Mr Lawson (Soc.,,Chester le Street) : The press did not give that out. Mr Runciman: I am not responsible for what the press does. I said the security for the Post Office Savings Bank is really the Consolidated 'Fund. It is equally true that during the month of August'and probably in .April also the Government of the day was apprehensive of the enormous increase of the loans made from the Post Office . Savings Bank to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. _ ’ Mr Thomas (Dominions Secretary), in answer to Mr Lansbury, said that iji August the Cabinet was told by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer that they had received an official intimation that not another copper could be borrowed for the Unemployment Fund; that the security had gone; and that the Post Office Savings Bank was in precisely the same position as other British securities. MR LANSBURY ANGRY. Mr Lansbury :' The statement we complain of—it was absolutely true, but it did its dirty work—(Ministerial cries of “Oh ” and Socialist cheers) —was that the borrowing from the post office savings was a special thing, and that because it was borrowed for unemployment purposes it was liable to be lost. That was a lie. and a putrid lie. — (Socialist cheers.) Mr Runciman: The right bon, gentleman has repudiated with vigour what was not said by any responsible speaker. (Socialist laughter.) Tens of thousands of the people who deserted their Labour representatives in the election, Mr Runciman continued, had in their minds an anxiety lest securities of one kind or another in the United Kingdom should go down or depreciate with the general fall of the sovereign, and nothing alarmed them more, in his experience, than the attempts made by the Labour Party to bring the banks into the issues of the election. If the banks played a prominent part in the defeat of the Labour Party, that party had themselves to blame.