EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 46, 24 February 1930, Page 9

EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

A PERMANENT BOARD

LABOUR . LEADER'S VIEWS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 16tli January;

Sir .Robert Hadfield's plea for an Empire Development Board finds a supporter in Mr. George Barnes, who" for ten years was general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and who has long been a conspicuous figure in trades union circles. Ho. was a member of the War Cabinet in 1917, a Minister Plenipotentiary at the Paris? Peace Conference, 1919, and has been Pensions Minister.

. "Much time has recently been spent in the advocacy of, Free Trade within the Eifrpire," writes' Mr. Barnes ,in a letter to the "Daily Telegraph." "It is a consummation de'voutely to be wished, but it depends upon our taxing the foreigner and the Empire overseas ceasing to tax us. These things are obviously far-off contingencies. Why worry about them? The Dominions are ■ wedded to tarilfs, and, while interminable discussions rage around them, the need for co-operation gets more urgent with a million unemployed men in our streets and markets closing against us all oven the world.

"An Imperial* Conference is to be held this year. There have been noiv, however, many Imperial Conferences.. And, it is true,, agreement has been reached on many things, especially, as General Smuts has pointed put, in the political sphere. But, as each conference has come and gone, there has been no permanent organisation left on the ground to watch and advise on purely business propositions affecting the Commonwealth.. ■■ ,-_

"While there seems to be common agreement that something should be done, nothing, as a matter of fact, has been done to set up a body to which there should be access between one conference and another, and which could formulate and advise schemes of Empire development.

"The International Labour Office was set "up in 1919, "and now meets the need. At this moment it is dealing with the coal question from an international point of view. ■ A similar organisation would meet the need in the larger sphere of Empire development. It might be called the Empire Development Board, or Advisory Council, or some such title, and it would consist of business'■ men and Civil Servants, representative of the Homeland and lands oversea.

"The resources of the' British Empire are almost illimitable. Men and money and credit are abounding. ' What is needed is' to bring these factors together so that wo should no longer be dependent upon countries outside to supply us with materials which, are now found among the 450 million people spread:over the 14 million square miles of territory flying the British flag. ''

"Again, I say, why worry about tariffs? Let us get a move on from; the ensuing Imperial Conference on a business foot: iug." '- '■' , .'