REPUDIATION ?

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 134, 3 December 1929, Page 12

REPUDIATION ?

LABOUR PARTY AND INTEREST

The allegation that if the Labour Party assumes office one of the first things it will do will be to repudiate interest on money loaned to the Government, was made by Mr. H. F. Johnston, the Reform candidate, in the course of his speech at Eastbourne last night. Mr. Johnston gave as his reason for believing that this would be the case the statement once made by Mr. H. E. Holland, Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party: 'What is interest? —something for nothing."

Labour's policy of the socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, said Mr.-Johnston, meant the confiscation of privatelyowned land and the nationalisation of the banks. An onslaught would be made on the workers' savings in the Post Office Savings Bank, against which an offensive would be more likely to be successful than if directed against the big banks, which could defend themselves.

To an interjector who suggested that a scrap of paper could not be torn up, Mr. Johnston replied: "Can't they! That is their objective. If you want to support them, you may as well hand in your Post Office Savings Bank pass book to the Labour Party now. But toll every Labour man to do that and see v what he says! If ho says nothing, ask his wife about it—ask the wife who has bankeH the children's savings, and see"* what she has to say. That is ■what they say they will do, and that is what we will fight to see they shan't do! (Loud applause.) Then they will go on to the Public Trust in which is invested the money of widows and orphans—big, small, rich or poor, funds are invested there, and are receiving interest. How would they bo treated under the direction of a man who says interest is something for nothing? I say it is sheer ruin and lunacy to put into power a party like that. I hope you will remember it." (Applause.)