A POLITICIAN IN A DIFFICULTY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—Men who work in the fields feel the approach of storms and periods of fine weather ; they can foretell by an acquired sense skies and temperatures. So the journalist accustomed for many years to study signs of change in the popular mind becomes aware of events impending, while they are still un- guessed at by the public at large.
For some time I have felt that we are going to have in this country Protection in some form or another. To set out all the signs which convinced me would take up too much of your space. On every side I noted them. I found life-long Free Traders doubtful of their deity. I found Labour men and women asking what use it was to keep all our employers up to certain standards of wages if we allowed foreign employers to send in articles made at rates far below those standards. Two of the best brains in the Labour Parliamentary Party, those of Mr. Wise and Sir Oswald Mosley, have been working on a policy of controlled imports. Even Manchester has gone a long way towards repudiating the doctrines of the Manchester School. It usually takes this nation about thirty years to assimilate a fresh idea. Close on thirty years ago Joseph Chamberlain proposed fiscal change. Change of some kind is about to be made.
It will not be Tariff Reform of the Chamberlain variety. It certainly must not be Protection of the old crude sort which left consumers at the mercy of farmer and manu- facturer. The Tories still talk as if that were possible ; the younger, more alert minds among them know well that disaster waits for any Party which should propose it. What we are going to have is scientific Protection which will safeguard equally those who purchase and those who produce. It may be called Empire Free Trade, though everyone knows it cannot be that, unless the Dominions decide to kill their industries. It may be called Control of Imports, which would describe it accurately enough. It will not be called Protection because that is a word the British nation hates and fears. It will have to allow for fixing of prices (maybe rates of interest as well). It will be as much of a novelty to other countries as Free Trade was eighty-five years ago ; they may be as reluctant to follow us as they were then. But if it suits our needs, what matter ? Our position is not like that of any other sovereign state.
Whether the change will have any direct beneficial influence may be doubted. The benefits of Free Trade were for the most part indirect. Manufacturers felt that a new era was be- ginning, that those who were to take full advantage of it must show enterprise and energy. So it will be now. We are suffering from nerves. Depression weighs upon us. We need a tonic, something to stimulate the appetite for adventure, something to make us all say " Now things are going to improve." That was what happened when we threw over Protection. Things did improve. They will again.
Of course, oUr problem now is the opposite of what it was then. The main requirement eighty-five years ago was the expansion of our export trade which could be aided by cheap food. To-day we have to expand our home market. We have to restore agriculture to its proper place as our leading industry. We have to find work for our unemployed. The nation has watched anxiously for the production of measures that would accomplish all this. No Party has been able to suggest them. Every day the feeling grows stronger that there is only one possible remedy—defence of the standard of life of our workers by checking the unfair competition of imports made under totally different conditions and in many cases dumped below cost.
Sensing this change in the air, I am in a difficulty—with many others. The difficulty is this : how can we best help to avoid a long barren struggle which is certain (in our judg- ment) to end sooner or later in the triumph of the new idea ? To join the Tories with their faces to the past, with their Safety First leader, their subservience to the hard-faced men of industry and f nance—is impossible to anyone of reasonably active intellect. The Liberals continue the worship of their Free Trade idol as if nothing had happened to us or anybody since 1845. The leaders of Labour seem little more alive to the altered situation. They go on asking whether countries with Protection have fewer unemployed than we, or as good con- ditions for the workers. If it were proposed that we should adopt the kind of Protection that is in force in most other countries, such queries might be pertinent. As an answer to the plea for controlled imports they are beside the point.
If Lord Beaverbrook had combined with his Empire Free Trade campaign a series of progressive reforms, he might have drawn away a large number of the supporters of Labour. He seems, however, unable to take into view any but the one scheme to which he gives so clever a catchpenny title. His aim is to be a political leader ; his method is that of a news- paper proprietor with a pet stunt. This is probably to be explained by the inferior capacity of his political advisers, which was almost comically revealed when his propaganda was started. Anyway, it prevents men and women conscious of the needs and the mental atmosphere of the age from con- sidering him as a possibility when they cast around for some company in which they can march.
My own feeling is that the change must be undertaken by Labour. It is in their natural line of development. How could we ever control industry without controlling imports ? The latter chahge must precede the former. The former could never be made without it. Yet the Labour leaders who were brought up as Liberals repeat still the Liberal phrases of their youth. Even Mr. Snowden is content with that. He does not argue, he pontificates. The old objection to protective tariffs—and a very sound objection, too—is raised against something altogether different. We could not afford to look at any plan which would make it harder for us to purchase the vast quantity of food that we have to bring in to supple- ment our own dangerously meagre resources. But an Empire Purchasing Board, having close relations with Canada and Australia, and requiring from the rest of the world merely what our Empire could not supply, would be in an impregnable position—save in the event of a world-wide failure of crops which would be disastrous (yen to-day. The same may be said about other imports likely to come under control. But official Labour shudders at the sound of the words.
Will there be a new alignment in politics ? Must all Parties be rent asunder so that the advocates of the new policy may come together and the opponents of it stand shoulder to shoulder ? It looks rather like that. And in the meantime there are many who find it hard to know what to do.—I am,
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