WANGANUI AGRICULTURAL & PASTORAL SHOW

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 263, 7 November 1945, Page 7

WANGANUI AGRICULTURAL & PASTORAL SHOW

BRITAIN MUST BE REVIVED MUCH SHE WILL DO HERSELF IN HER OWN INTERESTS While New Zealand will look very much to Britain to absorb the Dominion’s primary produce as of old, it will be readily realised that the British people themselves will do all they possibly can to re-establish their own industries. There is likely to be a big forward movement in agriculture in Britain, a stimulation of the activity brought about by the necessities of war. We in New Zealand will wish the British people well, hoping, at the same time, that her energies will dovetail in with New Zealand’s. Something of the intense determination in Britain to win back her former place in world trade, is given in an article by James Landsdale Hodson, in which he refers to a Scottish scheme to bring light industries to the heavy industrial regions of the country. South Wales, the north-east coast of England, Sheffield all share the same boat; all feel they were heretofore too dependent on the heavy trades coal, iron and steel. When those fell into depression terrible suffering followed.

I remember between the two wars a Clyde shipwright saying to me, “Chaps like me are scrap. We're just waiting to rush away. We built two ships a year before the yard shut doon —two ships so small ye could sail ’em in your bath.” He held out his two strong hands. “They’re as good as ’iver they were,” he said. And so they 1 were. But we could find nothing for them to do.

This must never happen again. The demand for new ships and our plan to distribute industries ought to make il improbable for long years to come if not impossible. But there’s another important Scottish industry to which thought lias been given—herring fishery. Before World War I. a thousand herring drifters were at work. Before World War 11. 400 to 500. To-day there are only about 150 drifter-s. But herring shoals are as big as ever. Herrings are swimming away when we could be using them. A MULLION BARRELS. In the old days we sent a million barrels of herring yearly to Russia. Then Russia decided to catch her own. We continued to send herrings to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Germany. What will happen in the future is uncertain. Before the war half the herrings we landed in Scotland were cured and 90 per cent, of the cured went to tlxe Baltic countries. It seems unlikely that they Will go to that degree in the future so that we need in the first place, new markets to provide a stable demand so that the herring fleet can ' expand once more. Those markets can be found both in Britain and places like the West Indies but to achieve

them we need more factories for freezing and canning. A herring industry board was set up a year ago to plan new boats, new markets and new methods. Specimen plans for new motor-boats of varying lengths are being got out and when necessary loans can be made to fishermen to help them buy them. A new factory for freezing the herring after the catch was set up at Fraserburgh with a plant, most of which is transportable so that experiments can be continued in East Anglis when the herring shoals move south—machinery following the fish. The idea is to freeze the herrings when there is a glut (it’s fairly common for catches to vary in a week from 1000 crans a night to 10,000 crans a night) and sell them when there’s a scarcity, thus giving all the year round herrings. The fisherman has his suspicions of these plans, of course. He has suffered enough to make him question anything. He fears the frozen herrings ousting his fresh ones and he fears the kipperers benefiting most by being able to kipper throughout the year. But arguments seem to the onlooker sound enough for making the industry on a whole a unit with kippering, curing, freezing,and the disposing of surpluses to oil manufacture and cattle meal as part of one whole industry founded on fishing itself. It has been suggested that a central organisation such as a herring board should buy every herring caught, and pay a fixed price for working, perhaps, on somewhat similar lines to the milk marketing board. Propaganda will have to be used too, to convince the people how nutritious herrings are 'and that there is something in the notion that herrings are just about as good for a hungry man as beef-steak. 1

In Scotland they wisely started on children and have prizes for new dishes designed by the children, that made use of herrings, oatmeal and potatoes. In passing, if we could teach Britons to be better cooks than most of them are, it would be a stroke of genius and a God-send. We have a saying “God sends food and the devil sends cooks.” There are exceptions but not enough.

SCHOOLS ABOARD SHIP. But I am no expert on the herring industry. All I can do is to outline what is going on. What will come of it all I do not know. If you meet a man like Sir William Darling, M.P.. who is draper, bookseller, author and chairman of the Scottish Industries Council, you’ll find several ideas running out of his head. For example, he wants us to build some big ships to take our children in their last year of school round the world to widen their knowledge. We have not. builders to build schools, he says, but we can build ships. (I suggested, for m,. part, that in addition, we might bu.’i some great sailing ships to send our adventurous boys round too and make fine sailors of them at the same time.) Sir William wants the Great Nori' ) Road to continue all round Scotland.; He wants us English to send our soldiers to do their training and manoeuvres in Scotland, where suitable land abounds and where the harsher climate would help to toughen them. (A lot of commandos were trained here during the war.) And he can’t see why so many of our great naval bases should be in the south. I said. “But what about. Scapa Flow and Rosyth?” He said, “Yes, but as soon as the war is over you begin to go away.” However this may be, you will see some Scotsmen who think their try should be used more by the armed forces in peace. We talked next about tourist business and the Scottish Ancestry Association which will help you discover about your forbears, if you had any Scots ones, and where they came from. Scotland’s proudly nationalistic in this business. I used some years ago to see a shop on Princes Street which showed which clan a multitude of names were affiliated to and which tartan you could rightly wear. So many were the names (and many un-Scottish ones at a glance) that I almost expected to find I too might rightfully sport a tartan. i Well, the Scottish business sense, coupled with genuine pride in their race, has done much. You can now, buy a map showing where the Frasers, Macdonalds. Andersons, Mackinndns and hundreds more hail from. 1

Of the American soldiers making the tour of Britain before going home a host came to Scotland. It will pe queer if in coming years Scotland |is not visited as seldom as it has befen visited before. New roads will helpf—• a fair number have been made in the past six years—and the hydro-electific scheme will help. Most of all, the Scots themselves will help.

REFRESHING QUALITIES. Coming here from England is refreshing. Vigour, humour and pugnacity—these run over. Last in a Scottish arts club a landscape painter of 81 who still exhibits and sells all he shows, was laughing with me over the fact that in the western Isles you can’t even paint on a Sunday, so rigidly is the Sabbath kept, without raising the ire of the inhabitants. A dramatist was explaining to me how he had been laying a ghost in an Edinburgh house. Another artist told how the Highlander, when asked what sort of a day its going to be will never commit himself—if you're a stranger he’ll hardly say what sort of a day it was the day before, though when he knows you he may take the cork out of his whisky bottle and as a mark of friendship throw the cork in the fire. But that was a pre-war habit.