America

What Fiji Has To Suffer Because She Is A British Colony

ECONOMISTS are pointing to the Crown Colony of Fiji as a good example of how a non-Socialist country, which has become prosperous because its economy is based on the first prmcipies of private enterprise, can be tied by unscrupulous politicians to the tail °l a Socialist State, to its own great disadvantage.

Partly because of exhaustion suffered in World War 11, but largely because her economic strength has been undermined by the Socialist Government which got into power in 1945, Britain to-day is comparatively poor, and her people are cruefiv short of essential goods. We are sorry to witness their plight, but we cannot forget that they are undergoing these hardships because, of their own free will and just when they appeared to be “on top of the world,” they threw themselves into the arms of a Socialist Government The British Rnpiniisf ■ forcing the British cSofoe™ which generally are anti-Socialist in character to suffer hardships in common with the people at home. That seems grossly un fair. J The Australian ivtp tvtv « n who renudiatid n tv!^ P cHff r M c i R H ssell wn° repudiated the stiff-necked and re-

actionary policies of the Country Party. and is now seeking re-election in his Queensland seat as an Independent, has been quoting the situation in Fiji. Fiji exports her gold and her canned pine apples to North America, and could sell her copra there at double the price ob tained in England, if it were not for the iniquitous MOF contract. In other words.

Fiji is an act^ al ai ? d P° tential dollar ® of considerable importance. Mr.

Russell said tha t. m the 5-years period 1945-49 Fiji sent to North America xthat 1S ’ sold {° r dollars) Soods worth £7,500,000 ™ re ■ than she im P° rted f ™ m North

America

°r> to P ut it Quite bluntly, the British Socialist Government grabbed for itself Fi ji’ s dollar surplus, and also, through the MOF contract and the trickery of Sterling devaluation, forced the Fijian planters to sell their copra to Britain at half the price they could have got for it 11 “ "f 6 so ! d North America, A llttle anal y sis by anyone with a know led-e of national economics will show that, if Britain had had anything other than a Socialist Government in power, the People of Fiji would have been allowed to trade much more freely and would be much better off.