A Job For All

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1014, 3 July 1930, Page 12

A Job For All

UNEMPLOYMENT PARLEY Party Leaders Invited WHY MR. BALD WIN DECLINED TO ATTEND THE reasons why the Conservative Party, through its Leader, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, declined to participate in the national emergency conferences on unemployment and agriculture, which were called by the Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, have been published. Mr. Baldwin refused to act in a conference the decisions of which he said would not in any case be made the policy of the Government on these particular questions.

British Official Wireless Reed. Noon. RUGBY, Wed. The text is published of correspon deuce which has passed between the Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, and Mr. Stanley Baldwin and Mr. D. Lloyd George, Leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Parties, respectively, regarding the holding of three-party conferences on agriculture and unemployment. The Prime Minister invited Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Lloyd George, with their colleagues, to take part in such conferences. Mr. Baldwin declined the invitation | to both conferences. In regard to the unemployment conference, he said: “You have made -it perfectly clear that, while inviting other parties to confer with you, you reserve to the Government alone the decision as to what is to be done. “We are, in fact, invited not to a Council of State, whode decisions will prevail, but to a conference in which you will submit to us your proposals, when they are matured, with the purpose, and the sole purpose of ascertaining what facilities we will accord for them. REASONS FOR DEPRESSION “We are compelled, therefore, to ask ourselves whether our participation in the conference held in such circumstances and-under such restrictions as proposed by you could be of any public service. “Our views upon the unemployment problem, its cause and its remedies, as far as they depend upon political action, have been frequently explained. “We believe the principal reasons for the decrease in employment are to be found in the lack of confidence in industrial and business circles occasioned by the political and economicpolicy of the Government and its supporters, and in the excessive burden of taxation laid upon industry iu the execution of that policy. “We believe that the most effective help which can be given to industiy in the maintenance and recovery of its markets lies in the wide extension of the policy of safeguarding which forms one of the main planks in the Conservative programme, and in securing and extending its position in other parts of the Empire by a system of preferential tariffs with our Dominions and colonies NOTHING TO GAIN ! “You have yourself been at paiiis j to indicate that, no useful purpose would bp served by a discussion of i these views in a conference iu which two of the parties are irrevocably opposed to them. It is impossible for us to enter a conference in which a consideration of the contribution i which we have to make is ruled out from the beginning, and we are expected to assume as -h basis of our discussion the continuation of a policy . which has so gravely added to national I distresses.” In declining participation in the proposed conference, Mr. Baldwin

pointed out he had agreed to a con- j fereuce of agricultural representatives I on a non-party basis. This had met ■ and reached certain unanimous deci sions. Measures whicli the Couser vative Party regarded as essential for the restoration of agriculture were included iu the recommendations of this expert conference. Hitherto the Government had shown no willingness to adopt any of these recommendations, but proposed to submit to the leaders of the Opposition parties only the results of the Government’s own study of the agricultural problem. SEEKING COMMON VIEWS The Prime Minister, replying to Mr. Baldwin, regretted that the latter declined the invitation to both conferences. He said: “I had hoped it had been made abundantly clear that the Government proposal was not as ! you say, to confer with other parties i after it has decided what to do, but I to meet them before having come to 1 a decision, and in the hope that when a decision was reached it might embody common views. “Of course the Government was to be responsible for any action that was finally adopted. Nothing else is constitutionally possible. But those taking part in the advisory deliberations would be in no way bound to support anything contrary to the views they expressed. “The Government tried to secure a national effort to meet a special national emergency. The invitation was therefore not given in order to open upop ordinary partisan controversy, either on agriculture or unemployment, but rather to try to discover if, while continuing to advocate their own views, the parties would confer on the peculiar needs of the moment and see whether some action of a practical and temporary kind could be devised to alleviate the unfortunate coni dition in which certain sections of i our agriculturists and our industria!- | ists find themselves owing to world | causes. LLOYD GEORGE ACCEPTS “Your colleagues decline to consider the proposal to make this national effort. That is all in which for a moment I am interested.” I Mr. Lloyd George, in accepting the ! invitation to both conferences, said: i “The economic condition of the courii try is such that I am convinced that inter-party co-operation is essential if wo are to take the action necessary to put agriculture on its feet again, and to reduce unemiiloyment to its normal proportions.” The proposals of the Prime Minister, which have thus proved abortive, were that representatives of the opj position parties should confer with a | committee of Ministers specially ap- ! pointed for the purpose, that two or three advisors, uot necessarily memmers of Parliament, should accompany the opposition leaders, that executive | officers of the Government should at I tend, and that the conferences should I be advisory and not executive.