Britain's Shipping
Sta,-Mr Wilfred Beckerman asks: 'Can Britain's shipping survive?' Perhaps the right question to ask might be 'Can Britain survive without her shipping?'
It is not, I think, irrelevant to point out, and especially because of the striking changes that have taken place in our economy over the past near fifty years, that in 1913 shipping was our biggest earner of foreign resources. We owned around 65 per cent of the world's shipping and by far the greater part of the food and raw materials coming into this country came in British ships. Shipping earned a net sum for the country of around £140 million. Translated into terms of modern money on a conservative basis that would represent around £700 million. But what in fact has been happening? Last year we paid foreign shipowners £11 million more than we earned and in recent times something around 45 per cent of ships bringing goods to this country have been foreign-owned. What has been the reason for this disastrous change? The answer lies in the abandonment of the free trade policy and the adoption of protectionism, which change began in 1915 as a war measure. Protection allowed the growing of sugar beet but at more than twice the price at which it could be bought in a free world market. That alone put out of business a large number of British ships. But the major disaster resulting from the protectionist policy has been to create a sheltered home market in which home pro- ducers could pass on increased costs to the consumer but shipping and shipbuilding and similar industries have not, being as they are in unprotected world competition, been able to pass increased costs on to the users of their services.
The situation now is becoming increasingly serious for British shipping because in the next few years around 600 Liberty ships will come to the end of their days. British shipowners and British shipbuilders will have great difficulty in filling that gap. On the other hand, the Russians are determined to do so. And it is quite conceivable that within a few years the British people will be dependent for their food and raw material supplies to a considerable degree on Russian ships. The strike, of course, will further reduce the ability of British shipowners to buy new vessels. An idea of the current costs of building ships in this country compared with what they used to be is that a 5.000-ton vessel today costs around £133 a ton to build against £6 before 1914. The only answer to this problem is to keep down the cost of living by allowing imports of all kinds to come freely into this country.
Despite the misleading propaganda of some of the farming representatives it is still true as Kipling wrote: For the bread that you eat and the biscuits you nibble.
The sweets that you suck and the joints that ou carve.
They are brought to you daily by all us Big Steamers-
And if anyone hinders our coming you'll starve.
S. W. ALEXANDER
President. The Cobden Club 78 Montagu Mansions. London, WI
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