ELECTORAL TRUCE IN BRITAIN

Southland Times, Issue 25692, 29 June 1943, Page 5

ELECTORAL TRUCE IN BRITAIN

MR MORRISON SEEKS CONTINUATION (8.0.W.) RUGBY, June 27. “I believe that if we were to come out of this Government in the middle of this great war, that if we were to break the electoral truce ourselves and to proceed deliberately and almost with malice aforethought to break up the political unity of this country the young man in the Bth Army would want to know why the politicians were squabbling at home while he was doing the fighting,” said the Home Secretary, Mr Herbert Morrison, addressing a London Labour Party meeting. He said that, while Labour could not “cut the dash it would like to” in a Coalition Government, it was not prevented from expressing its 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 the transformation of the imperfect social order into a better social order. There was, he said, need for more public ownership and public control of production, but that control must be constructive and helpful and not merely bureaucratic. In Britain’s financial policy after the war there must be no financial irresponsibility. Britain’s leaders must draw up a scheme of priorities, decide how to spend the country’s money and then spend it fruitfully and without waste. EXPANSIONIST POLICY The financial plan must be expansive, not restrictive. There must be no hidebound acceptance of the old idea that finance must dominate production. There must not be sharp changes in the value of money and there must be no sharp inflation or manipulation of the | 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, the country could certainly pursue moderate expansionist policies in peace. What had happened was that the Government had made the banking and financial system the servant and not the master, as it had been in 1931. “Labour favours expansionist policies and proclaims that fact,’ Mr Morrison concluded, “but, with the example of war-time finance before it. Labour knows very well how to pursue expansionist policies while keeping the pound steady.”