Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 29 Gorffennaf 1926.
In the catalogue of the benefits which it is said this country is going to receive from this expenditure of a million pounds, the right hon. Gentleman included the magic one of publicity, and he defined the aspects of what that publicity was going to be, but he never hinted that in this publicity campaign he was going to say anything about the labour conditions under which any of the goods boosted for sale were going to be manufactured. I should say, from his own point of view, if he desires to popularise British Empire goods, such as Australian dried fruit for instance as against Smyrna dried fruit, he ought surely to let it be known to the people of this country that, the Smyrna dried fruits are handled by labour which is paid 3d. to 4d. per hour while Australian fruits are paid as high as 1s. 9d. per hour. But there is another side to it. When he is boosting the South African wine on the hoardings and in the columns of the "Daily Mail," I trust he will tell the public the labour conditions on the farms of South Africa as disclosed by the recent Economic Commission appointed by the South African Parliament. The natives work virtually under conditions of slavery. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman of this, that, while many of us believe that along the lines of voluntary Preference there can be a big increase in the consumption of Dominion goods in this country, there will be persistent opposition to the boosting of goods produced by sweated and underpaid labour, and we will take care from these benches that the labour conditions under which they are produced are properly explained to our people.
There are many people in this country who, when they think of the British Empire, think of the old John Company and its manners and methods of acquiring land and property in Hindostan. They think of the noble red man of the forest and the noble black man of the bush—both largely fictitious—and they think of the iniquity of expropriating these noble fellows who are armed only by bows and arrows by means of British machine guns. Exploitation and extortion, cruelty and terrorism have played their part in the building of the British Empire, but we cannot under any circumstances expiate the past by dwelling upon the past alone. We have to face the present situation and the future, and I think it would be wholly wrong—as it is very largely foolish —to spend our time looking at the methods by which the British Empire was acquired, and to disregard its economic and social effect on the people of this country. There are many of us—personally I know very little about the facts—on these benches who are alarmed at what is going on in Kenya. The difference between the economic conditions in East and West Africa is certainly very marked.
An hon. Member opposite gave us a. very interesting catalogue of figures of British exports to our Dominions and to foreign countries. I will give him these figures. Whereas last year we exported 12s. 4d. per head of the West African population of British goods, we were only able to export to the United States 9s. 2d. per head, That West African can be developed, but it will never be expanded by the methods which have been taken to rule our Protectorate of Kenya. Kenya is run on an entirely different basis. It is run on the old exploded methods of capitalism. In West Africa we had Sir Hugh Clifford and others who fought the capitalists and did their best to preserve the independent producers and stop economic exploitation and robbery of one kind and another. I have here a newspaper called the "East Africa," dated the 15th July, 1926. An article in it begins as follows:
No economic necessity, other' than the trifling need of procuring his hut tax, compels a native to work. Consequently, one
does not find amongst Kenya natives the discipline that is to be found among the lower classes of the white races"—
British workers will take note of that—
who have to work so that they may exist.
That is an attitude of mind. I do not say that is the attitude of all white settlers, but it is an attitude of mind that this Parliament, so long as it is responsible for Kenya, must do everything it can to destroy, and to elevate instead the conditions that obtain in Uganda and the Gold Coast. They cannot prosper in Kenya under such conditions as are indicated. Other hon. Members, who have been there and who are more acquainted with the facts, will be able to speak on that question.
I rose merely to reinforce what I take to be the Socialist proposal regarding the British Empire, made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas). As I take it, there are three ways in which we can bind this Empire together. There is the method favoured by so many hon. Gentlemen opposite and, indeed, by the Secretary of State for the Dominions himself, that is, the method of Imperial Preference by taxation. That means taxation of food for the British worker and the raising of prices to him. I believe it does raise prices I think I can prove it, but I do not want to go into a fiscal controversy now. The point is that industrial workers believe that taxation of imported food will raise the price of that imported food. If you proceed to bind your Empire together by beginning with the taxation of foodstuffs, you end by disintegrating the Empire. You will have the Empire made a thing of more than contempt and will create antagonism in the mind of the industrial worker of this country. From that point of view alone, I think it is a mistake to tax foodstuffs, and as you cannot have Imperial Preference unless you do so, it is a very bad policy.
There is another method advocated by the Member who spoke from these benches, and that is voluntary preference. I think that method will develop, and have a very big effect. But there is a method advocated by the right hon. Member for Derby which is now the official policy of this party, and that is bulk purchasing and distribution at the cheapest possible price to the people of this country. The present Secretary of State did not attempt in any way to dispute the figures given by the right hon. Member for Derby. We went in for bulk purchase in the War, and bought the wool crop and reduced the price of wool. [An HON. MEMBER: "It cost a lot of money!"] I could produce the OFFICIAL REPORT, showing a net profit to this country of £66,500,000, and there was actually handed back many millions of pounds to Australia for distribution. We reduced the price by 3½d. per lb., and we clothed the last 100,000 troops that went to the War cheaper than we clothed the first 100,000, and it was the first business of the capitalist Government after the War to scrap that efficient organisation and throw the wool-growers of Australia into the chaos of commercial competition. I do not think that that was doing a service to the British Empire.
Let me reinforce by one or two other figures what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby said. Sir Joseph Cook, the representative of the Australian Commonwealth Government in this country, made a statement in. the "Manchester Guardian Commercial Supplement," on the 20th April, 1924, that meat landed from Australia at an inclusive price to the Australian producer of 4⅞d., was being sold at 10d. and 1s. in London. And New Zealand stock arriving here is actually being sold to our people, 100 yards away from the London Docks, where it was landed, at 1s. 2d., 1s. 3d. and 1s. 4d. per lb. During the War the Government of Australia and New Zealand supplied it at 4⅛d. We know that the late Lord Kitchener, on being appealed to on behalf of certain institutions, put his accountants on the job, and they figured out that we could re-sell that meat to institutions in this country at 6½d. per lb. And they did. During the War there were institutions in London buying meat from the War Office at 6½ per lb., and all round about them the same meat was being re-sold at 1s. 6d., 1s. 8d., and 2s. per lb., according to the parts. I have a statement by the Leader of the Labour party in Australia, Mr. Charleton, to the effect that mutton produced in Australia at 2d. per lb, is being retailed in London at 1s. 2d. per lb. It arrives here at the price of 4d. and a fraction of a penny; our people have to pay, I believe, is. 2d., and the Australian producer lives on the bare edge, sometimes losing money, sometimes making a little, but always at the hazard of the market. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby has put forward a Socialist proposition. Let the British Government undertake to purchase the exportable surplus from the Dominions and retail it at cost price. No, says the right hon. Gentleman, we have not the public spirit now that we had during the War. Public spirit, to allow the British and Argentine Meat Company to make a profit of £500,000. How many hon. Members know that we actually had to pay £1,275,000 to the American Meat Trust, not for meat but in order to prevent the American Meat Trust from selling meat to Germany in the early stages of the War. We gave them the money for nothing.
Immediately the War was over, we scrapped the inter-Empire meat purchasing organisations and handed it over to Lord Vestey, who went to South America during the War in order to escape Income Tax, and then they gave him a peerage. There are some people who say you get the advantage of competition: but competition has gone; it is dead. You have rings everywhere, arrangements everywhere, price control everywhere. Eighty per cent. of the exports from Canada are controlled by the Wheat Pool. Seventy to 80 per cent. of the grain exports from South America are under the control of three firms, two Dutch and one French. I saw the right lion Gentleman the Secretary for the Overseas Trade Department here a moment ago. It is only a few weeks ago since the Imperial Markets Committee Report was published, and we were told that the grower in Jamaica gets a penny for every five bananas he has to sell. He has to sell them to an American shipping and banana-growing trust who control the whole trade. The Secretary for the Overseas Trade Department admitted that when he buys a banana in London he has to pay 2d. for it, while the poor grower gets only Id. for five. It is the same with apples. The late Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. A. V. Alexander) produced figures which were confirmed by the Wholesale Co-operative Society and His Majesty's Government, to show that rice which had arrived at the wholesale price of 13s. a hundredweight from Rangoon, is somehow controlled and is sold from 23s. 4d. to 56s. per hundredweight. The Australian grower gets 1d. for his apples, and at Wembley they were sold at. 6d., and in Tottenham Court Road they were on sale at 9d. Take any other food you choose and the same thing happens.
We are surrounded by capitalist rings and groups, some of them British, some mixed, some of them with no nationality. Some of them do not want to have a nationality. They are prepared to rob, plunder and bleed the British Empire or any other Empire, irrespective of the flag. Sooner or later, we must face the fact that, with the food supplies being in private hands, we are at the mercy of a robber gang. If the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies and the Government make up their minds that the way to bind the Empire is to ensure a guaranteed market to the Empire producers by offering, to purchase their exportable surplus and sell it at the cheapest price through the co-operative societies or any other organisation —if you like through the present trading organisations, giving them limited profits —and thus bringing down the prices, you will give to the working men and women in this country a share in the Empire, a reason for desiring to build up the Empire and extend it. It is a real League of Nations. The British Empire should be and can be a real guarantee for the peace of the world, and you will be able to spend far less money on munitions of war than you are doing just now. You will ensure peace, you will guarantee peace, you will bring more food, better food, cleaner food and greater prosperity to the people of this country.