Election Issues Stand Out

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30562, 3 October 1964, Page 17

Election Issues Stand Out

IM

ALAN MITCHELL,

N.Z.P.A. :

Special Correipondentl

LONDON, October 1. Two main issues are standing out fairly clearly as the British General Election campaign proceeds: The differing policies of the Conservatives and Labour on “modernising” Britain (which includes the cost of living and housing); and on nuclear defence. The basic difference between the two major parties on the rather loose yet allembracing word “modernisation” is on how it should be planned. The Conservatives say it should be by consent and not by compulsion. Labour plumps for planning “at the centre,” which would include the setting up of a new ministry of economic affairs. On nuclear defence the Conservatives maintain that Britain must retain control of her own deterrent. Labour would “renegotiate” the Polaris agreement, and hand over Britain’s nuclear defence to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. OLD TAG GONE So far the broader debate has been that ranging over the many aspects of modernising Britain. A key phrase being used by the Conservatives is “it’s your prosperity —keep it.” Carefully avoiding the “you’ve never had it so good” tag, they emphasise the steady all-round improvement in the standard of living since 1951. Briefly, their argument Is that they will build on this progress, aid industry to increase national production by 4 per cent each year, build 400,000 houses a year, keep the cost of living as steady as possible, aid pensioners, continue with the various programmes of road building.

and the like—but there will be no compulsion. Labour’s reply to present prosperity is that Britain should have been even more prosperous, and would have been under successive Labour Governments. “This do-noth-ing Government,” says Mr Harold Wilson scornfully, promising that socialism, which includes some further nationalisation, will make Britain a far, far happier land.

Both parties are conscious of weak spots in their arguments. The Conservatives wince at any trade figures which suggest from time to time that what Labour calls their “stop-go” economy may indeed be approaching a stoppage. Labour appreciates that in disparaging' present prosperity it takes a risk of running down Britain herself rather than the Conservatives.

The many speeches, newspaper articles, television and radio broadcasts now drenching the country are variations on the differing themes of modernisation.

When Labour leaders say, in so many words, “anything the Conservatives have done we will do better—they are so ignorant,” the Conservative comeback is to ask how much it will cost. “Come clean on the costs,” they demand. To Labour’s cry “time for a change” the Conservatives reply: “Why change when the country has never been so well off before?” TICKET TO TABLE

On nuclear defence, Sir Alec Douglas-Home “the Conservative leader,” Mr Wilson now calls him; not “the Prime Minister,” now that Parliament has ben dissolved —has been emphatic in his,insistence that Britain must keep her independence and her “ticket to the top conference table.” Mr Wilson has stuck, so to speak, to his N.A.T.O. guns. He had been backed by Mr Jo Grimond, leader of the Liberals, who regards Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s arguments as “most dangerous” and a “direct incitement” to every other country to get nuclear weapons. Each day is marked by verbal cut and thrust. At times it almost seems that, according to the politicians, no party knows anything about politics or governing a country. NECK AND NECK It is now accepted that both . Conservatives and Labour are running neck and neck, and that Mr Grimond has done as well as anybody on television. One of the many imponderables of the poll is the effect or influence of the Liberal vote, whether it. will aid either major party, or whether it will mean, as Mr Aneurin Bevan once remarked, “that a taxi will still be able to hold all the Liberal MPs.”