NUFFIELD’S MILLIONS

Grey River Argus, 3 June 1943, Page 3

NUFFIELD’S MILLIONS

Lord Nuffield has given away another ten million pounds. With his other benefactions hjs gifts now total 25 millions. Editors of many newspapers have, praised this kingly generosity and point to him as an example for other very rich men to follow. Personal generosity is one of the most charming of human characteristics and therefore occupies a deservedly high place in our affections. Gifts on the scale of ten million pounds, however, cease to be merely personal in their nature. They are events of profound social and political implication. We may therefore be forgiven if we look this particular gift-horse more closely in the mouth. The first result of our examination is the discovery that Lord Nuffield has been giving away our money much more than his own. At present rates of income tax and super tax nineteen shillings and sixpence of every pound earned by Lord Nuffield’s ten million pounds worth of stock would go to the Exchequer and be spent in such ways as the nation determines. What Lord Nuffield has given is not ten million pounds, but ten million sixpences. Even that is a lot of money and would set some of us up for life. The point, however, is that we were taking nineteen and sixpence from every pound earned by that ten millions of capital, and now we won’t get it any more, because under the trust created by Lord Nuffield the revenues will be exempt from taxation. It is a little difficult to see why we should be grateful to Lord Nuffield for giving away our money.

But that is the most superficial aspect of the question and serves only to mute our transports of gratitude. The deeper implications of gifts of this sort are quite disturbing. If Lord Nuffield lives another year his gift will be exempt from death duties. These would have yielded the Exchequer six million pounds. So not only has the gift deprived us of nineteen and sixpence earned by every pound of capital, but Lord Nullield’s action has denied us six millions on his death. This isn’t generosity. This is robbery. It is a device by which rich men remove their wealth from the results of democratic decision. From now on thousands of workers employed by the capital owned by this trust will be working for purposes decided upon by the persons appointed by Lord Nuffield, and so long as the law remains as it is, this huge sum of twenty-five million pounds.

When protests have been made against a society which permits millionaires, most people have shrugged their shoulders and answered • that suitably levied taxation would rectify the abuse. Lord Nuffield knows the answer to that one. He removes his wealth from the area of taxation, and does it in such a fashion as to win a reputation for generosity. He sets up a private kingdom of his own. protected not by private armies—as yet, anyway—like a medieval baron, but by the affection and gratitude of a people too bemused to realise what is happening to them.

We end with this warning. The national budget as an instrument for establishing social justice between rich and poor is blunted by such benefactions a s those of Lord Nutfield’s and Parliament should take steps ’to stop the practice before greater slices of the nation’s resources are removed from the reach ot the people by rich men who like playing at being God. —“Tribune.