Unilever Menace

Can it Be Controlled in Peacetime?

Letter to the Editor A CONFERENCE in the Atlantic framed the famous Atlantic Char ter—Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear, and so on.

Lately, a conference in Canberra (New Zealand and Australian Ministers) dealt with many Pacific problems.

But was the great international Com bine, Unilever, even mentioned as the holders of a pre-war Pacific Charter?

This Combine, pre-war, was free of fear, free from want, and free from all competition. Unilever had a strangle hold on most of the Pacific insofar as copra production and marketing went.

Unilever called the price of copra, and the producers were never free from want or fear.

In the last couple of years, the Minis try of Food in Britain has controlled the prices of both the raw product (copra) and the manufactured article (mar garine); and only since then have the copra producers been getting a living and a nrofit out of their conra.

What is to hapnen after the war? Is the Ministry of Food to hand back to Unilever its control over conra? That Question is not answerable at the nresent moment; and so the Pacific copra pro ducers are not free from fear.

If the Ministry of Food can control raw product prices and can control Unilever activities in wartime, why not take con trol for all time of things like Unilever?

Surelv if it can be done in war, it should be easy in peace.

Until Unilever is wiped off the map, there never will be freedom from want or freedom from fear in the Pacific.

I am, etc.,

Ganibulu.

Fiji, 15/2/44.