The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1928. BRITISH LABOUR POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 238, 8 October 1928, Page 6

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1928. BRITISH LABOUR POLICY.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

The Labour Conference at Birmingham has helped to define more clearly the position of the party in regard to the extremists. The place of Mr. Lansbury as chairman of the party is now filled by Mr. Morrison, a moderate man holding more enlightened and less fanatical views. Mr. Maxton, one of the noisiest and most dangerous of the "left wingers," was howled down when he attempted to introduce needlessly controversial topics; and Mr. Wheatley, who with Mr. Maxton has recently associated himself publicly with the irrepressible Mr.. A. J. Cook, has heard his favourite scheme for the subdivision of the country's total wealth among the people, condemned as "impracticable and unreasonable."' We have already dealt briefly with Mr. Snowden's views on fiscal policy. But without a detailed report of his speech it is impossible to say whether his condemnation of indirect taxes is intended as an attack on Protection or a defence of the workers against fiscal oppression. In regard to taxation for revenue purposes, economists generally speaking admit that indirect taxes are not so equitable or so easily capable of adjustment to the capacity of the taxpayer as the income tax or the land tax. During the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century the proportion of Britain's revenue raised by indirect taxation was reduced from 75 per cent to 25 per cent of the total, and it is generally admitted that this change reacted most beneficially upon the condition of the wage-earning classes. But when Mr. Snowden tells us that £40,000,000 of indirect taxation has been imposed in four years he is certainly including in his estimate the effects of the "safeguarding" duties which are designed not to raise revenue, but to protect essential industries, and this opens up an entirely different line of discussion. Apparently Mr. Snowden follows the Cobdenite tradition to the extent of regarding Protection as a means of raising prices, without taking into account the increased employment and the wider diffusion of wealth that it produces. If taxes on imported goods give Labour more work and more wages, and thus more purchasing power, the wage-earner may be far better off under Protection than under Free Trade. That even the Labour Party is beginning to realise the economic dangers of the Free Import system is clear from Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald's suggestion that if the importation of "sweated" foreign goods tends to lower British wages, such goods should be totally excluded from the British market. Mr. Mac Donald's contention that the tariff policy of the Labour Party is not that of the Liberals appears to indicate that Free Trade principles are losing their hold on Labour, and it would be interesting to know how far, on this subject, Mr. Snowden shares his leader's convictions.