Mourners' Bench

In the House of Commons, M.P.s wept brotherly tears over the plight of Britain's free-enterprise system. "England is occupied country," said Social Crediter Ernest George Hansell. "A foreign way of life is there." Tory Member Lawrence Wilton Skey put in ditto marks and added: "We must now be ready ... to give them [by allowing immigration] the freedom which they will be denied at home."

For this sort of talk the free-enterprising Ottawa Journal last week ran an editorial stopper:

"What has Mr. Attlee's Government done so far that we haven't been doing? Last week it passed its bill nationalizing all inland transport. Well, some 20 years ago our House of Commons passed a bill nationalizing one of our transcontinental railways [Canadian National, which has a total of 32,103 track miles, also has holdings in steamships, hotels and summer resorts] and since then we've nationalized our air transport, both inland and overseas.

"The British are nationalizing their electricity. We nationalized ours years & years ago, or a vast part of it. ... (Ramsay MacDonald, here in the 1920s, said we had more socialism than England.) . . . Mr. Attlee nationalized the Bank of England; it is no more nationalized than our Bank of Canada. Also, haven't we a nationalized radio . . . not to speak of complete control of our wheat marketing, nationalized steamships, plus all sorts of other controls?"

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