EMPIRE TRADE

Waikato Independent, Volume XLIII, Issue 6035, 21 October 1946, Page 7

EMPIRE TRADE

CONSERVATIVE VIEW MR EDEN EXPLAINS The Conservative Party conference carried unanimously a resolution calling for the maintenance of the principle of imperial preference. Mr L. S. Amery said that the country was just keeping its head above water as a result of the American loan and the rising export trade in a seller’s market.

What would be the position when conditions returned to normal, he asked. Britain had to face acute competition from those with standards of living lower than her own. “Can we afford to cast adrift the sheet anchor of our trade which takes more than half our total exports? It will be madness to take our chance in a catch-as-catch-can world competition for everybody. What the United States wants is a veto on economic preference with the Dominions eventually becoming economic tributaries to the United States.”

Mr Oliver Stanley said that no nation had the right to criticise the British Commonwealth for making arrangements among themselves. Support for the American loan was given on the understanding that there should be no definite reduction or abolition of imperial preference. All that the agreement committed Britain to was discussion of the possibility of some reduction in imperial preference margins in return for an equivalent trade concession by the United States. “We shall watch that conference with the greatest care and will insist that the agreement shall not be a United Kingdom one, but an Empire one,” he said. Mr Anthony Eden, in a speech at Liverpool on the Conservative Party’s industrial policy, declared that the development of the national economy should be the responsibility of a partnership of the Government, capital and labour. Changing conditions made it inevitable that the State must play an increasing pait in the national economic life. It was wrong to regard free enterprise and State organisation as exclusive and conflicting alternatives. On the contrary, the organising power of modern Government could be developed to help free enterprise and adapt itself to changing world conditions. In the iron and steel industry there was an excellent example of how commercial management, with all its advantages, would be combined with a wide measure of supervision in the public interest. Government leadership could be invaluable but Government direction might be disastrous, he added.