Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1924. THE LABOUR MINISTRY

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 20, 24 January 1924, Page 4

Evening Post. THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1924. THE LABOUR MINISTRY

By the almost unanimous vote of the Liberal "M.P.'s, the Conservatives have been turned out of office and a Labour Ministry has taken their place. By an absolutely unanimous vote, the Liberals have since affirmed " their steadfast determination to resist every attempt to destroy private enterprise and establish socialisation of industry." The air of comic relief which as always needed to ease the strain of tragedy or melodrama is supplied by this belated "postscript to an irrevocable decision. Is not the logic very like that of the householder who unconditionally admits a burglar to his house and then solemnly resolves to protest vigorously if the visitor fails to behave himself as a gentleman should? Whether the extarordinary action of the Liberals works out for the good of the country or not, it surely represents the suicide of the party. If a Socialist regime realises the'fears of the supporters of the existing system, the Liberals will be justly blamed for it. If it does not, the Labour Party is far more likely to get the credit for it than the Liberals, except insofar as the defeat of a Socialist measure can be directly traced to the intervention of the Liberals on the side which they abandoned in Monday's fateful division.

When even the " Morning Post" is compelled to admit that, "assuming that a Socialist Ministry was inevitable, there is not much to take exception to in this one," it is obvious that the Labour leader has made a very good start with his extraordinarily difficult task. ( Apart from the inexperience .a'large proportion of its members—a deficiency which was, of course, inevitable in th"c , circumstances—the chief objection to the new Cabinet is its size. Twenty names have already been announced, and 'it is not clear that the list is complete. The lobby correspondent of the "Daily Herald," who may be credited withl official inspiration, is at some pain/to explain why the list is.so longi ' x v

The reason for the large Cabinet is, he says, that--a great deal of work will be done-by the committees of Ministers, which will^ thresh out questions referred to them, and report their conclusions to the full Cabinet, whose function will be to supervise and make the final decisions. Thus the country will have the Government organised on business lines.

It must be confessed that this reasoning has a rather amateurish air, and that the happy conclusion looks very like a " non sequitur." The size of Mr. Asquith's Coalition Cabinet was justified on similar lines, but there was a wide gap between its theory and its practice. If Mr. Lloyd George's War Cabinet achieved better results, it was largely because all the heavy work was done by %n inner Cabinet,of half-a-dozen. The Labour PaTty, which is already looking out for means to assert its control over the Cabinet would certainly not like to see the real control pass to a select inner circle of the Cabinet itself.

In the quality of its personnel the new Cabinet stands high. "It is scarcely the" list that the Labour rank and file expected," says the "Daily Chronicle," "but it is not necessarily the worse for that." It is, on the contrary, all the better for that- if, as we may safely assume, the variatiqn is the outcome not of prejudice or snobbery but of a genuine desire for efficiency. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald has an awkward team to manage, and the catholicity of his selection is sure to displease of the extremists of his own party. In that superfluous and, we believe, unjust gibe at Mr. Baldwin reported a few days ago, Mr. Macdonald said: "Labour is an offence to their (the Conservatives') sense of the proprieties. They regard us as be-\ longing to the hobnail breed." It ■will be but poetical justice,if the preference which as an intellectual Mr. Macdonald has shown for those' of his own class gets him "some of his own back." Less than half oi his team have ever been manual workers.

Out of twenty new Ministers, only seven, we are told, are Trade Union officials. Of the other thirteen half are recent accessions. to the party.

If we are entitle 4to assume thairi the half of thirteen is seven, the new arrivals, of whom at least one has not yet appeared on a Labour platform, have an equal represen- i tation with the Trade Unions.

Labour malcontents who are on the look-out for trouble may find more of it in the fact that a- Ministry which was to represent the purest brand of democracy and to put the classes in v their proper place includes no less than three peers and hopes to add to the number. Lord Haldane, who is one of the most valuable of Labour's raw recruits, would have inspired more confidence than Mr. Stephen Walsh at the Wai- Office, where he did admirable work before the war;, but he will make an excellent Lord Chancellor, and by his work as a Law Lord has fully earned the position. Lord Chelmsford, who is a stranger and a surprise to the Labour Party, will be much the same to the nation at the Admiralty ; and as Lord President cf the Council Lord Parmoor will have less scope for his unbalanced pupifism thun he might have bad elsewhere, The first of the new

peerages are expected to go to Sir Sydney Olivier and General C. li. Thomson. A better choice than that of Sir Sydney Olivier for the India Office could not well have been made. He was one of the original Fabian Essayists, has had a wide experience of colonial administration, both in London and in the West Indies, and in various capacities has shown that happy faculty of accommodating theories to the demands of hard facts which is of the essence of statesmanship. A Cabinet which includes such men as Sir Sydney Olivier, Mr. Sidney "Webb, and Lord Haldane will certainly not fail -for lack of brains.