Orders of the Day — Supply.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 6 July 1925.

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Photo of Mr Shapurji Saklatvala Mr Shapurji Saklatvala , Battersea North

I was not advancing any new illustration. I was refuting an argument which was considered to be in order and which was raised by a right hon. Gentleman two hours ago. Several of them did it, and I am sure several of them are going to. It is no use raising the Shanghai bogey. It is the duty of the President of the Board of Trade to curb the Foreign Minister and the Minister of War from looking at Shanghai from a wrong standpoint. What Great Britain wants to do is exactly what it is alleged the Russian Bolsheviks are doing. If you really mean business, if you want to maintain your trade, if you want the Chinese market, forget to treat the Chinamen as your slaves under the booming guns of your battleships. Learn to treat the Chinamen as the Russian Bolsheviks are treating them as your brothers and your equals, teach them that if they are to work in factories belonging to you they should learn to live like the men and women in Lancashire, and not as in some other part of the world. That is the real way, and the right way, of restoring your Shanghai markets and your Shanghai trade instead of through guns and bullets and by talking nonsense about the humane work, the Christian work, of the Bolsheviks of Russia.

One last word in regard to the suggestion that the Britisher should be asked to use British goods only. It sounds poetic, but you are crippling your own trade in the future, because we are still living in a capitalist world of individual rivals. If it is a virtue for Englishmen to say, "Only use British goods," why is it not equally a virtue for the Indian to say, "Only touch Indian goods and have nothing to do with these devil foreigners"? Why is it not equally a virtue for Chinamen to say, "Only have Chinese goods and have nothing to do with foreign devils"? It is the same spirit. If it is right for you, it is right for everyone else, and if you entertain that doctrine, and propagate it, that it is the supreme virtue for every national only to use the goods manufactured by that national, you will soon be deprived even of the raw materials on which your trade depends. Why should the Egyptian or the Indian or the Mesopotamian send you their raw material? The virtuous thing for them would be to use it themselves. I think the greatest danger for Britain will come from the spirit that every nation should use the national goods only, and I hope this Government, even in spite of its centuries of tradition, will abandon that injurious theory.