POSITION IN BRITAIN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 76, Issue 6480, 20 February 1948, Page 4

POSITION IN BRITAIN

ADDRESS BY MR W. N. PERRY

OBSERVATIONS ON VISIT OVERSEAS

The guest speaker at this week’s meeting of the Te Awamutu Rotary Club was Mr W. N. Perry, of Bruntwood, Dominion President of Federated Farmers. Last year Mr Perry attended two important conferences, one in Geneva and one in Holland, and he also visited Britain. Tuesday night’s address consisted of his impressions of those conferences and his views on the food position in Britain.

Mr Perry was introduced by the President, Mr V. A. De Coek, Mr Perry said it gave him great pleasure to come to Te Awamutu and give an account of his experiences of his trip overseas last year, and the conditions as he found them in Britain. In regard to the latter the speaker said he greatly feared that they were worse now than when he visited the Old Country. Mr Perry said he attended an International Trade Conference in Geneva as a representative of the primary producers of New Zealand. At that conference all countries, except Russia, were represented.. Geneva was a beautiful spot, with delightful people. Mr Perry laughingly said he could now understand why international conferences dragged on so long! If the ideals behind- the conference were to be brought to fruition there must be freer trade, and existing trade barriers done away with. With petty jealousies existing it was difficult for nations to get together, and it was those petty jealousies that kept them apart. They had made progress at Geneva, and they were still hammering away at the problems. Mr Perry said he was afraid Imperial Preference would be done away with, and if such occurred it would be to the detriment of the Empire, including New Zealand. The latter was in the main a primary producing country and over 90 per cent went to Britain. With preference jeopardised it would have serious repercussions on New Zealand. America was anxious to do away with Imperial Preference. Mr Perry said he had attended a conference at The Hague where farming representatives of 32 nations met. It was a most interesting experience to meet farmers from all parts of the world and discuss problems which were found to be similar to those of New Zealand. There was even a representative present from Iceland, where one would hardly expect farming to be an industry. The speaker said that he felt that the organisation set up at The Hague would do a power of good when surpluses of goods arrived. If those countries producing wheat and rice were to get two consecutive good seasons, She large production of those commodities that would then ensue would result in repercussions here. They were at the moment in a sellers’ market, but that position could be changed overnight to a buyers’ market. In Holland he had found the Dutch farmers to be good workers; their farms were not highly mechanised, nor was the country highly industrialised.. The farms were very small, and they were doing a wonderful job in re-constructing the country. Mr Perry recalled the act of the Germans in breaking a dyke that swamped 12,000 acres. In three weeks the Dutch closed it again and in six months they had pumped the water away. In 1946 the harvests were quite fair and in May last when he saw them they were looking quite well. Many of the farm houses were erected in soft brick and when the water descended on them from the broken dyke they collapsed. The houses opened out into the cowsheds. Mr Perry said he could not find words sufficiently eloquent to describe the beauty of the tulips which were in bloom when ’he was there. Each bed had its own coloured tulips and the sight from the air made the tulips resemble a patchwork quilt. The tulips were grown, not for their beautiful blooms which were cast aside, but for the bulbs. The Dutch people were wonderful workers, reiterated the speaker. Leaving Holland Mr Perry said he went to England, where the conditions, especially in regards food, were as bad as one could possibly imagine. As an indication of the seriousness of the food position, Mr Perry said he had lost li stone in weight in six weeks. The trouble in Britain, is that the people are not getting the right sort of food and not enough. The people are willing to work and do work, but in order to give of their best the people must have ample food. While he was in England the rationing of meat was one shilling and two pence worth per person per week. They were allowed one rasher of bacon each per week, 2 ozs butter, 2 ozs of cheese and 2 ozs of cooking fat per week. Since he had left England Mr Perry said that the value of the meat ration had decreased to one shilling, and the speaker asked how could people work under those conditions. It was remarkable that they did so well. They were not getting enough food to enable them to produce more. Mr Perry said he had visited a number of factories and in some they had canteens where the workers were able to get a good mid-day meal. At Huddersfield there was one factory where 3000 employees were engaged and in that factory and in some others, the employees were able to get a meal of soup, steak and kidney pie with tea for Is 3d. In order for that to be done the factory owners subsidised the costs, and it paid them to do so because the employees worked better. Milk was also rationed—lJ pints per person per week being allowed. That ration was now down to a pint a week, so that no variety could be made in the meals. There was plenty of fish but it was very easy to get tired of a continual fish diet. It was the monotony of the meals that “got” the people. Mr Perry urged those sending parcels to continue to do so and he favoured the sending of individual parcels, for it was the personal touch that appealed, and it had a psychological effect. In a letter received recently, Mr Perry said the writer said the only thing they had in plenty was fresh air. The people had to queue up for many things and while it was not so bad in the summer, it was terrible in

the winter. Such conditions pertained in England to-day and he believed that they would continue for some time to come. Britain was in a deplorable economic crisis and her position to-day was as serious as she faced after Dunkirk in 1949. The speaker said he had faith enough to know that she would win through and weather the storm as she had done throughout her long history. Mr Perry dealt at some length with the position of the American loan which was hoped to last until 1951, but owing to the lid being lifted off controls it would not last beyond June of this year. Britain had realised on all the gold she could, and unless something was done along the lines of the Marshall Plan she would be broke. Mr Perry said it seemed to him that Britain would be facing her greatest crisis in June. “If Britain went down, we would go down also, for she was the only country that took our produce to any great extent,” said Mr Perry. Continuing, the speaker said Britain was spending a million pounds a day so as to keep food costs down. New Zealand had the satisfaction of knowing that she was supplying Britain with food at a cheaper rate than any other country. New Zealand was held in wonderful regard in Britain, but as a prominent businessman had told him while in Britain, there was no sentiment in business, and the day might come when Britain might have to buy from those who bought from her. That that position would arrive much sooner than most people expected was the opinion exnressed by Mr Perry, who went on to say that Britain must have the help of all parts of the Empire and with that help she would win through. While some things were being done in Britain that perhaps they did not approve of, they should forget those things and help see Britain emerge from her difficulties. After the 1914-18 war Britain was the greatest creditor nation in the world, but that was not so to-day and Britain. had emerged worse-off from the second world war than any country in the world. Mr Perry referred to the trade agreements between Argentine and Denmark and Britain, stating that those countries were getting larger prices from Britain than was New Zealand. Both Argentine and Denmark, after an endeavour to exploit Britain’s troubles had to ask for a new agJ.ement.

Mr Perry urged on all to send parcels to someone in Britain, for he had been told that were it not for the parcels received from New Zealand and other parts of the Empire the people would not be able to carry on. Fats were urgently wanted and dried milk, honey and tinned tongues (not bully beef) should be included in parcels, so as to supplement the all too small and monotonous rations that the people lived on. Mr T. Clark thanked the speaker for his address.

In briefly returning thanks, Mr Perry said he considered duty to let as many people as possible know iof the conditions that existed in Britain.