GENERAL ELECTION

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 146, 22 June 1945, Page 4

GENERAL ELECTION

BRITAIN IN THROES

BIG WOMEN'S VOTE LIKELY

By JAMES L. HODSON LONDON, June 11. For the first time in ten years we, in Britain, are in the throes of a general election. On most evenings you can hear, over the radio, a chosen speaker of one of the political parties putting over their policy and trying to win our allegiance. Never has radio been used so much in an election; never, I think, have voters had such a good chance of learning at first hand what it is all about. Women, who cannot leave their homes and children to attend meetings, can be well informed. I believe women are going to vote to a degree they have never voted before. .

It is going to be fascinating to see the result of that. I think we are the first of the democracies to "go to the country" now that the war in Europe is over to find out what people think about the future, what they want doing and how they want it done.

Fewer Women Candidates No matter how rollicking or caustic some political give-and-take in this election is so far as the prosecution of the war itself goes it makes no difference. Whoever gets back, Tory or Labour, will hit the Japanese just as hard as they can with all we have got. So the electoral fight is on and by the end of July we shall know where we are. We shall vote on July 5 and 19 days later —an interval to allow the soldiers' votes to come from all over the world in special aircraft from western Europe, for example, and Egypt, Burma, Canada, Iceland, West Africa and the Pacific —the counting will take place. The new register adds 7,000,000 voters to the number we had before. A special "service register" has been made for the Armed Forces and seamen; everybody can vote who is over 21 and is a British subject and has a residence qualification or a business qualification. Moreover, votes can be given by proxy. (For instance one of my daughters in the W.R.N.S. has made me her proxy for fear that anything in the shape of location or travel should prevent her from voting.)

As you would expect there is no lack of candidates. For the 640 seats in the House of Commons (an increase of 25 over ten years ago) there are well over 500 Conservative candidates; about 550 Labour; some 300 Liberals; 32 Commonwealth; 22 Communists and a number of I.L.P. and Independents. Suprisingly, only 61 are women—six fewer than there were in the last general election.

Scope for Servicemen

All the main parties are keen on procuring candidates from the fighting services. The Conservatives have 120; Labour has as many (including General Mason MacFarlane, who was our first Director ofi Military Intelligence of the B.E.F. in France and later head of the Allied Control Commission in Italy); and the Liberals have a good number, among them Air-Vice-Marshal Bennett, Chief of the Pathfinders.

To discourage freak candidates a deposit of £150 has to be put down. If any candidate does not get oneeighth of all the votes cast he loses his £150. Limits are fixed to the sum he may spend on trying to get into Parliament—his own personal expenses are limited to £100 and he may not spend more than 6d a head for each elector in a county constituency (where distances may be fairly great) and 5d in a borough, which works out at from £1250 to £1500. How much of this comes out of his own pocket depends on his party's funds and how much can be raised locally by his supporters. But many a man has to spend £500 or more of his own money—a cost which prevents a good many people from entering the lists. Another preventive is that an M.P. draws for that work a salary of only £600, and when he has paid income tax on it and possibly provided himself with secretarial help, little remains for living expenses.

This election, judged by its beginning, promises to be a lively one. This is not unnatural, since tongues have been curbed for so long. Speeches must not be slanderous, blasphemous or seditious, but short of that a good deal of latitude is allowed. Humour, ridicule, rhetoric and the suggestion that the country will be well-nigh ruined if the opponents' side wins—all this will be resorted to. But most of us won't take it too seriously; we shall know hyperbole when we hear it.

I believe the results of this election will reflect the serious but undaunted mood in which we face what lies ahead, not minimising the difficulties, but remembering what we have done and knowing in our bones what we can do.