The Press Monday, December 29, 1924. Proportional Representation.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18267, 29 December 1924, Page 8

The Press Monday, December 29, 1924. Proportional Representation.

The advocates of Proportional K'eprcsentafion lost no time, after the general election in Britain, in declaring that the result of ihc election demonstrated very clearly the need for what they call electoral "reform." With 7 A million votes the Unionist Party won 415 scats, while Labour, with oi million votes, won 100 seats, and the Liberal Party, with rather less than 3 million votes, found themselves with 42 members only. It is natural that Liberal writers and speakers should clamour for P.R., since they see in it the only means whereby their Party can be saved from complete extinction. But in the numerous articles and speeches on the subject in the Liberal newspapers we have found no attempt to prove the fallacious assumptions upon which the ease for P.R. is based, nor anything in the nature of an answer to the objections raised against this undesirable method of voting. As a rule, the advocates of this curious "reform" are allowed to expound their arid fallacies unhindered, but now and then some of the objections are set forth in detail. We reprint to-day an article in the "New Statesman" of November Bth to which the local supporters of P.B. ought to pay some attention. Headers of "The Press" will find in the "New Statesman's" article gome of the arguments which have been advanced in our own columns, with some others in addition. The "New "Statesman" points out that the advocates of P.R. assume, and make no attempt to prove, that the House of Commons ought to correspond with mathematical exactitude to the number of votes cast. Our English contemporary gives some very good reasons why the House should not be a mirror of the electorate, and although these reasons have been given before, we know of no reply having been made to them. Parliament is a place for getting things done, and done in accord with what is judged to be the will of the country. But it could get nothing done with any assurance that it was carrying out the popular will if it consisted of a number of unrelated groups with no mandate for co-operation in any particular way on any particular subject. This is perhaps tho strongest argument against P.K.—-that for the Two-Party system which has worked so well, there would, be substituted a system of groups which would make government the result of such bargaining as the groups might make for their own advantage. *By way of supplementing the "New Statesman's" article we shall briefly notice one of the fallacies appoaring in the articles which the Proportional Representation Society is pouring out in the friendly columns of the afflicted Liberal Press in England. "The outstanding feature of the election is the "deadening of life, the suppression "of opinion. In many places citizens "had no opportunity of voting for a "candidate of whoso views they approved; in many other places the "vote when recorded had no effective "value." It is playing with words to say that a vote has no effoctivo value if it docs not count in Borne way towards the return of a member. One might as justly say that in a no-con-fldencc division in tho House which results in the Government's favour the votes of the Opposition have "no "effective value" and that the Opposition's "opinion" is "suppressed." No opinion is suppressed which can be expressed. The trouble with the P.K. Society is that it ignores the facts of politics, and one of these facts is that every Government thinks constantly of the votes cast against it at the polls. The P.K. theory, indeed, actually assumes that when a Government is placed in power it rides roughshod over the minority and does what it pleases, leaving a great section of the nation writhing under a hatoful tyranny and bitterly conscious that its liberty and its opinions have alike been destroyed and suppressed. "P.R.," it is said again by the P.R. Society, "would "have enabled the nation to. know the "real strength of parties." But an examination of the details of the polling tells us as much as P.K. could on this point. Finally, is it possible for anybody to doubt that the work of government will go on far more efficiently where some party has a clear majority in Parliament than where, under P.K., there would no party with a majority at all, but only a scries of groups manoeuvring for advantages for special sections of the nation?