BRITISH SHIPPING

Wairarapa Daily Times, 11 June 1932, Page 3

BRITISH SHIPPING

ITS HOUR OF TRIAL. The Hon. Alexander 'Shaw, deputy chairman of the P. and O. Co., in a dinner to the Lord Mayor of London on board the Strathnaver, in Tilbury Docks, referred particularly to foreign shipping competition. London was still the undisputed centre of w r orld finance, he said, and the world’s greatest seaport. British shipping w r as passing through a fiery trial. It had never endured such a prolonged and severe depression, which would continue until the channels of international trade had been cleared of excessive tariff barriers, and the economic and political chaos arising from war debts and reparations. He prayed that Britain’s clear-cut policy of the cancellation of the largely unpayable and largely unreeeivable war debts would meet at the Lausanne Conference the response that its vision and courage deserved. Britons not only should “buy British’’ but should “travel British,’’ Mr 'Shaw maintained. British shipping had never asked for subsidies, and had no Government umbrella to shelter it from the storm of subsidised foreign shipping, but in facing unfair competition British shipowners had the right to expect fair play from their own kith and kin. Some competitors w’ere not only subsidised to run on an uneconomic basis, but had the Suez Canal dues paid for them. Britons mostly preponderated as passengers on Italian vessels. An Italian newspaper had recently boasted that the Italian flag had acquired absolute predominance in the Indo-European • passenger traffic. That claim at present w r as illusory, but the menace w r as real. Such uneconomic competition, concluded Mr Shaw, impaired the strength of Britain’s sea heritage and sapped the invisible exports on which the balance of her international trade largely depended. The problem had reached such a pitch of severity as to demand the serious attention of the public, if not of the Government. Britons might well pause to consider the menace. The Lord Mayor said that he hoped that the appeal would not fall on deaf or unsympathetic ears. Without the shipping industry the nation would be paralysed, and their little isolated island of no account in the world.