Relief Within Year

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 624, 28 March 1929, Page 11

Relief Within Year

LLOYD GEORGE AND UNEMPLOYMENT To Spend £200,000,000 in Record Time (Australian and 2s.Z. Press Association) (United Service) LONDON, Tuesday. MY pledge, based on tested proposals, promises to bring about a reduction of unemployment to the normal -within a year on work that is nationally essential and without additional taxation. I have vainly implored the Government this session to grapple with the problem and I am now making a direct appeal to the country.”

The Leader of the Liberal Party, Mr. Lloyd George, delivered a speech at the Albert Hall in support of his party’s programme for dealing with unemployment. The Marquess of Reading presided. After making the claim quoted above, he said: “The Conservatives’ programme will not be launched until the eve of the General Election, when there will be no time to criticise it. The Labour Party has 80 inconsistent propositions. "Including dependenats there are nearly 4,000,000 sufferers from unemployment. The cost to the country of the necessities of existence for those people is £600,000,000. “Since the armistice there has been plenty of work, namely, in the reconstruction of British roads to meet the demands of the new traffic. The streets of London now carry 250 vehicles, compared with every 100 in 1921. The Ministry of Transport accepted the plans, but did nothing. “The Government was vainly urged to link up the existing roads. It is a Government of missing links. Slum improvement will be futile if we lack improved communications. “The Liberals propose to develop the telephone system in England, which stands only 10th in this connection on the list of nations. We will deal with agricultural drainage, and restore 2,000,000 water-logged acres to cultivation. This will provide employment for the workless. LOAN OF £200,000,000 “Our critics now admit that every £1,000,000 spent on road-making would employ 4,000 men in the cities and 5,000 in the country,” continued Mr. George. “However, they object that it is wasteful to spend £200,000,000 in two years. “We spent £5,000,000,000 in two years at the time of the war. We have nothing to show for the present expenditure on the dole. Is not that waste? “The Liberals’ programme is for five years, but we would concentrate upon the first two years, after which the recovery in trade would increase the difficulty of obtaining labour for road-making. “We would finance our scheme by raising a loan of, say, £200,000,000, spread over five years on the, security of the Road Fund and the values created by new roads. We would repay the loan from the annual increase in the Road Fund, which would sufljce in spite of Mr. Churchill’s raid upon it of £30,000,000. * WOULD REDUCE ARMAMENTS “Our other projects would be financed by taking 600,000 people off the insurance fund and by having

1,200,000 people working for wages instead of receiving the dole. Outdoor relief would disappear. “We are to spend £175,000,000 on armaments this year, compared with £75,000,000 before the war, when the German Fleet existed,” said Mr. Lloyd George. “What is the use of peace pacts if expenditure on armaments is not reduced?

“Sir Austen Chamberlain’s spirit of Locarno is badly corked. Nowadays he is only ‘nailing rainbows on the sky and conspiring with France to make them tricolour.*

“Hugely armamented peace is a swindle. We took the greatest risks for war. Let us take some for a peace, which, with progress, will finance even more extensive schemes. “We do not want dictators, but men who know their job. They are plentiful, but not in the Government. Let the nation see to

Mr. Lloyd George, who was vociferously acclaimed, spoke for 75 minutes and his speech was relayed to 13 towns by wireless along a main trunk line 2,000 miles it was heard by 50,000 people. ,