Service and Socialism

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22520, 30 September 1938, Page 12

Service and Socialism

In his Christchurch address the Prime Minister was obviously straining every nerve and all the resources of language to suggest, without using a plain denial, that the Government's principles and objects are not socialistic. He had told Lord Balfour of Burleigh, he said, that what' the Government wanted was service, "and if we got it from private concerns there "was. no reason why we should share their "worries in giving that service. Let them " carry their own worries." The Government, Mr Savage told Lord Balfour of Burleigh, would only step in and provide service if private enterprise could not. Again, he specially assured his " good friends in the stock and station

"agencies and in the banking corporations " that he had quite enough to do and to think about "without butting into their jobs at all, if they "will only do the job." But if they do not do the job, then the Government .will do the job. having no object but " simply to see that there "is some security for industry and business " and some security for the people in the even- " ing of their lives." And it has, Mr Sayage grants, "not gone half the way "; but as soon as he lets fall that phrase, " The leader writer "immediately says": 'There you are. That is "'quite clear. Mr Savage means by that the "'whole of the way in the socialisation of.the "' means of production, distribution, and ex- "' change.'" Does he not? In spite of the soft version of Labour policy framed for Lord Bal- • four of Burleigh, in'spite of the disarming, re- : assuring gestures in the direction of bankers, stock and station agen,ts, shopkeepers, and everybody else in Labour's line of fire, is it not true that the Government's advance has been, is, and must-be, step by : step, towards precisely that end. the socialisation of the means of production, distribution,- and exchange?. , The political advance of the Labour Party is, of course, inconceivable in any other terms and'is, in those terms, expressly, set- before it by .the party constitution. .The Prime Minister, like his colleague the Minister for :Rattways, who has with childish cunning discovered, room, tq wriggle between "the means'*, and "all the "means," has become very shy of confessing Socialism as his political creed and the socialised State as his object; but he can repudiate neither. Instsad, he pretends and professes " that Labour can go where it wants' to go and achieve what it wants to" achieve without thrusting private enterprise aside and,, at last, under: The pretence will not do. It'does not satisfy the more courageous "members of his own party; and it will not 'deceive a single elector who can read plain print* and interpret plain actions. -