FRESH SCENE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 236, 5 October 1945, Page 5

FRESH SCENE

BRITISH POLITICS

Conservatives Not One Big Happy Family N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent Rec. 10.30 a.m. LONDON, Oct. 4. The curtain is about to go up, with a new session of Parliament next week, on a fresh scene in British politics. Before it does so something in the nature of an interesting inquest is being held to-morrow on an event that is now dead, but by no means forgotten. It is a conference of those Conservative party members defeated at the general election, who agreed to meet, let down their hair and have a "frank exchange of views." Particular interest will be taken in this occasion, which will be private, but from which some news doubtless will emanate. There are many indications that the Conservative party is by no means one big happy family. On the contrary, it is introspective, is undecided why it lost the election and also apparently as to what its future policy shall be. Desire For Reform Mr. Michhel Foot, M.P., the Daily Herald columnist, with typical picturesqueness, declares: "The Tories are in a shocking temper that not all their public school training had enabled them to take their

LONDON, Oct. 4.

licking with a stiff upper lip." This is a rather malicious exaggeration. But that there are differences has been indicated by Mr. Quintin Hogg, one of the Conservative reform group, who has made it plain that he and his group believe that the party was led to suicide through the influence of the "Old Guard," and also by Lieutenant-Colonel Sinclair, who resigned the Conservative candidature for East Edinburgh on finding a division in the party between "those members whose object is to reform and those whose object is to preserve." So far some of the most direct comment on the Conservative party has been made by Mr. Arthur Mann, the former editor of the Yorkshire Post, who angered Mr. Chamberlain when he opposed the policy of appeasement in the pre-war years. He expresses the opinion that the Conservative party will not be revived automatically by the swing of the political pendulum, that if the present Government fails to live up to its expectations the result may not be a Conservative triumph, but a new challenge from the extieme Left, or possibly "a resurgence of political Liberalism."