CONSERVATIVE PARTY

Hokitika Guardian, 25 November 1929, Page 5

CONSERVATIVE PARTY

FRAMING EMPIRE POLICY,

[United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.]

(Received this day at 8.30. a.m.) LONDON, Nov. 24.

__Mr Stanley Baldwin musingly addressed six thousand ■ Conservatives at Albert Hall, regarding employment. He pointed out the only expanding of the markets world were in the Empire. He announced, amid applause, bis colleagues’ self-accepted resolution passed at. tlie Conservatives’ Conference 011 the subject of Imperial Trade. There was talk of a United States of Europe, but Bri bain’s progress depended on its capacity to visualise the Empire as an eternal, indestructible unit for the production, consumption, distribution and maintenance of the improvement of the lot of all dwellings herein. He owed a word of gratitude to Lord Beaverbrook for forwarding the idea of a United Empire.

British businessmen recently issued a manifesto bringing before the people another aspect of the many-sided question of Empire unity. “There lies our problem. It is the task of a generation to solve. In it rests tlie question of employment of our people and the continuation of the beneficent existence of the Empire itself. To that task our policy will forthwith be framed.”

The meeting passed ft resolution of unabated confidence and enthusiastic support of Mr Baldwin. Attention is attracted to a passage in Mr Stanley Baldwin’s recent speech to the Conservatives at the Party’s conference, in which he said. In framing an Empire policy, to which the Conservative leaders must devote themselves, it was essential that they should take the youth oir the Conservative Party into their counsels. A generation may be needed to effect this unity, of which we draw the burden. The fight may well lie on the shoulders of the young. The Daily Telegraph Parliamentary correspondent learns that the inquiry whicli was indicated by Mr Baldwin will be a thorough and, systematic one. It is lipped it) will be possible to frame a policy in detail which will avoid the stale theories of twenty years ago, and will take Julf account of modern conditions.

Tlie Daily .‘Telegraph’s: c-6‘f fPspondent also learns that Air Badwin and his colleagues express the opinion that Empire development/ must'‘inevitably be linked up with the question of employment in Britain. It is pointed out that the matters connected with the expansion of Empire trade must be the outcome of consultation, so far as the Dominons are concerned; but that Britain has a free hand in the Colonies and the protectorates, which might be organised to produce what raw materials are reuired without going outside of the Empire to the extent that it is necessatv to do to-day. The fact that tne Empire; Ts now self-supporting is regarded’ in Conservative quarters as having 1 revolutionised the outlook It is considered that the time is ripe for a thorough re-examination of all the possibilities' of Empire trade. Mr Baldwiti 1 has at present I ' merely foreshadowed the production of a complete policy in’due course. . Conservative circles express the hope that the question will now Vie kept in the forefront on all the platforms.