PLANNING AND HERRINGS
Sm,—Two passages in adjoining paragraphs in your Notes of the Week in The Spectator of August 30th make strange reading when taken together. In one paragraph you say: " The prerequisite for any improvement in the situation in Germany is more food for the people. Last week twelve persons in Hamburg died from starvation." In another paragraph in the same page you say: " The statement that 192,000 herrings were dumped into the sea at Whitby on Monday to avoid flooding the market' emphasises the need for planning. At glut periods some food must always be wasted." It is remarkable that you should be moved to take note of the waste of what is relatively a mere flea-bite of 192 trans on one day, and overlook the fact that for the last three years the herring fishing industry has been restricted, as a deliberate measure of official policy, to less than half its full potential capacity. What sort of planning have you in view?
Before the first world war the herring industry, without any planning by any board, exported something like 2,000,000 barrels of herrings annually. In those days dumping was a rare occurrence, and, when it did occur, was an accident, never part of a " plan." You state that " Mr. Strachey is already aware of the problem." A previous Minister of Food (Col., now Lord, Llewellyn) was also aware of the problem. When in office last year he said: " The solution of the problem must be sought not in the restriction of fishing, but in the. provision of means for dealing with the herring surplus to home market requirements by curing them." Are we to understand that the Ministry of Food has reversed its policy as declared by its former chief?—Yours faithfully, M. McKENztz WOOD.
Mayfield, Cullen, Banffshire.
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