USE OF WORD “LIBERAL”

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26020, 25 January 1950, Page 5

USE OF WORD “LIBERAL”

OBJECTION RAISED BY PARTY THREAT TO SEEK INJUNCTION (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) LONDON, January 23. The British Liberal Party to-day threatened to seek. a High Court injunction to stop the Conservatives and the National Liberals, who are election allies, from using the word “Liberal” in their “label,” say Reuter’s political correspondent. This development came after a week-end of rival “official statements,” which threw into relief the intense anger of the main .Liberal Party—which polled 2,239,000 votes in the 1945 election—against ttie alleged encroachments of the National Liberals. These National Liberals are survivors of the 1931 Ramsay MacDonald National Government, who have thrown in their lot with the Conservatives. The National Liberals polled only 790,000 votes in 1945, but they returned 13 members to Parliament against the main Liberal Party’s 12. Mr Churchill, leader of the Conservatives, and Lord Rosebery, the National Liberal president, last night issued a joint statement on party labels advising candidates representing both the Conservatives and ’the Liberals or the National Liberals, to stand as “Lib-eral-Conservatives,” or' “Liberal-Union-ists.” They said that in the last three Sears Conservatives and Liberals or ational Liberals in more than 60 constituencies, had combined to pledge support to a joint-selected candidate. The orthodox Liberal Party, immediately protested. In an official statement last night it declared that all the 60 alliances mentioned by Mr Churchill and Lord Rosebery were controlled by the Conservative Party and “had no connexion whatever with the Liberal Party.”