EMPIRE CONFERENCE URGED TO OVERCOME BRITAIN’S PROBLEMS

Wanganui Chronicle, 5 November 1949, Page 5

EMPIRE CONFERENCE URGED TO OVERCOME BRITAIN’S PROBLEMS

LONDON, Nov. 4 (Recd. 6 pm).— Various suggestions are being mad* in Britain at the present time that some kind of Empire Conference should be held to examine ways of helping solve Britain’s economic diffif culties. So far they have drawn no from the Government. The latest were heard in the Lords during a debate on the Government s economies. Lord Teviot, for instance, declared that Britain seemed to be •getting deeper and deeper into economic distress, and she should now have “a family party of all component parts of the Empire” to evolve some plan which they could ‘'get together.” Such a conference, he said, should be attended by all parties to produce a plan “even if we have to tighten our belts.” Lord Balfour, of Inchyre, in the same debate, said Britain should use her special position as a political centre of th e Commonwealth and financial centre of the sterling area to create a new system of reciprocal multiateral trade. There should be a bold policy of Empire development looking within the Empire for Britain’s raw material needs and away from hard cur<?ncy countries. An alternative to striving for a solution of her difficulties which rested on dollar dependence -as in the stimulation of Commonwealth trade. There should be a colonial empire development, an invitation to her own partners to expand the scope and measure of imperial preference, and they should get away from the most favoured nation treaties. Empire trade was not in conflict with, but stimulated, general world trade.—Special N.Z.P.A. Correspondent.