“PAY-OFF” ON SUEZ

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28264, 30 April 1957, Page 13

“PAY-OFF” ON SUEZ

Labour Leader’s Prediction

(N.Z. Press Association Copyright) (Rec. 8.20 p.m.) LONDON, April 28. The Suez “pay-off” would come this week with Britain forced to accept a far less satisfactory settlement than she could have had last October, the Labour Party’s chief spokesman on economic affairs, Mr Harold Wilson forecast in an address to a May Day rally at Brighton, Sussex, today. Mr Wilson, a former President of the Board of Trade, said: “This week will see the ‘pay-off’ for the lunacies of the last six months.” “As the government press and the Suez group work off their spleen on the Americans, they vainly try to conceal the fact that our failure to get a better settlement of the Suez problem is primarily due to the British and French aggression last October.” He said that Britain had been “sent off the field” and now stood watching events on the touchline. “None of Mr Macmillan’s quips or evasions, none of his eleganj Edwardian eloquence can disguise this disastrous turn of events in world affairs “Mr Macmillan climbed to power on the back of Lord Salisbury because the diehards thought he was more likely than Mr Butler to follow an imperialistic foreign policy,” said Mr Wilson. “Now Lord Salisbury has been ditched and Mr Macmillan has had to accept the realities of the international situation,” he concluded.