Will Beaverbrook Lead?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 864, 7 January 1930, Page 9

Will Beaverbrook Lead?

CONSERVATIVES’ UNCERTAINTY Baldwin’s Methods Assailed SCHEME EARLY .OPPOSED ' United I*. A.—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, Sunday. ONE of Lord Kothermere's newspapers, the widely circulated “Sunday Pictorial,” gives great prominence toda\ to an article frankly advocating the selection of Lord Beaverbrook as Leader of the Conservative Party and the next Prime Minister.

The article says: “All the parties suffer from bad leadership. Mr. Baldwin, as leader of the Conservatives, possesses a record of incompetence, disaster and blundering. His only defenders comprise a small clique of personal firends. The remainder of his followers criticise him openly and bitterly. “The rank and file of the Conservative Party demand vigorous and successful leadership. They are convinced that a leader must be found outside the established hierarchy. “All this explains why Lord Beaverbrook and his Empire free trade crusade attract adherents. “Tomorrow the Rothermere newspapers will inaugurate an economic policy for the restoration of prosperity. It will be based on high protection for British manufacturers and workers, but will advocate no food taxes for which it will substitute subsidies for the benefit of the farmers and farm workers. “Lord Rothermere holds that these subsidies could easily be paid by a reduction in what he considers to be the extravagant expenditure on social services.” VOICE OF DOMINIONS BEAVERBROOK ATTACKED “MAD HATTER SCHEME” LONDON, Sunday. The Empire economic policy of Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere

was referred to by Mr. George Lansbur>\ First Commissioner of Works, in the course of a speech in the East End of London last evening. He described it as the most “mad hatter” scheme ever evolved. Mr. Lansbury said both peers were worried about public expenditure. The Government's greatest crime, according to Lord Rothermere, was increased expenditure on social services. He objected to raising the school age in respect of unemployment payments, but British history had proved that expenditure on social services was the best insurance against revolution. Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere desired to develop the Dominions, They forgot that Dominions like Australia and Canada desired to develop their own secondary industries instead of buying British manufactures and sending food in return. On November 10 Lord Beaverbrook in the House of Lords propounded a. scheme for establishing- the Empire as a single unit for fiscal purposes. Lord Beaverbrook’s plan was a tariff wall round, the whole Empire. He said the imports into all parts of the Empire at present totalled £2,200,000,000 a year. Of these only £900,000,000 were imported from one part of the Empire to another; the remaining £1,300,000,000 - worth came from foreign countries. Since the war the exports of Britain to the other parts of the Empire had increased by 67 per cent.; Britain’s exports to foreign countries had increased by only 16 per cent. So the Empire was Britain’s best potential customer. “We do not propose any duty on Empire foodstuffs,” said Lord Beaverbrook. He contended that no increase in the price of foods would follow a tax on foreign foods imported into the Empire because there would be no shortage. The Empire could now produce all the food needed by each part of the Empire. In fact, there would be a surplus, and so there ought not to be any increase.