Voice of Dominions

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1023, 14 July 1930, Page 9

Voice of Dominions

POLICY IN EMPIRE TRADE Labour Seeks Co-Operation AIM TO BENEFIT ENGLISH WORKERS A PROMISE that the voice of the Dominions’ will be heard when the economic and trade policy of the British Empire is being framed at the Imperial Conference in September was given by Britain’s Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, at the week-end. It was made clear, however, that the Labour Government, would aim at securing with the Dominions economic arrangements which would benefit the English working classes.

United. P.A.—lly Telegraph. — Copyright Reed. 11.55 a.m. RUGBY, Sunday.

A passage in the speech of the Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, at the Crystal Palace, last evening was devoted to the policy of Empire free trade. There was not a single Dominion but was developing on Nationalist lines its own industrial economic evolution, he said, and no Government, whatever its majority may he, in this country, could force on the Dominions an economic policy in which the Dominions did not believe. The implication was that the Labour Government had no interest in the Dominions and no influence upon Dominion opinion.

“Against that,” be went on, “I say that if the Dominions are going to come with us in economic co-opera tion; if the Dominions ana ourselves are lo devise an economic and industrial policy which will be beneficial to all of us; then the Labour Government has a better chance of bringing about that agreement than the Government of any other part in this country.

“In the Imperial Conference in September we are going to do everything 'that can be done by a British Government to come to economic arrangements with the Dominions that will benefit the working classes of this country.”