LABOUR DISUNION

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 114, 18 May 1925, Page 11

LABOUR DISUNION

LEADERS WITHOUT DRIVING

POWER

LORD BIRKENHEAD ON THE OPPOSITION.

(niOH OCR OWN COEBBSPOKDENT.)

LONDON, 7th April. Lord Birkenhead made an amusing attack on his political opponents at the annual dinner of the Primrose League. Ho found no very encouraging reflection, he said, when he considered the case of the Liberal Party. They were the rivals in politics of the Conservative Party for many generations. They were entitled to little compassion ;it the moment of their fall; they fell because they deserved to fall. They had done nothing to deserve the epithet which they had pilfered from the noble English language. It was not without a ( pleaisant feeling of irony that he recalled that they perished because they had sinned against the light; and whe"n' they placed trade unions on their political side above the law, from that moment their doom was sealed. ■ The leaders of the Liberal party accounted themselves wise when they thought to make trade unions their accomplices, but little did they know what was in store.' The Independent Labour Party was then coming to the House of Commons in a single bus, under the leadership of Mr Keir Hardie, in his deerstalking cap To-day the Liberal Party could be not uncomfortably accommodated in a' taxicab. (Laughter.)' - -■■■■- ,;.'. .. .. . RANGE OF CLASS'HATRED: '

The difficulty of analysing the views ot the Labour. Party was that by an unfortunate coincidence no two members; of the party held the same views, and that all those who were leaders of the Labour Party happened to differ profoundly from those who were the followers. An even greater difficulty was presented by the inconvenient circumstance that none of tho leaders possessed the slightest driving-potrer in the country, tho whole of the droWpower being possessed by the followers. Supposing :Mr. Clynea, or that very clever, patriotic, and courageous man, Mr. Thomas—ho would not speak about Mr. Mac Donald, because he did not know whether he should speak of Mr Mac Donald as « fcne leader" or "the ™ v er> j' ,? nd a natural deli<^y made him decline .to interfere ■■ m , a domestic quarrel like that; but suppose Mr. Clynes or* Mr. Thomas made at a street corner, say, in Bradford the kind of speech that they listened to at banquets, would it compel enthusieftW f+K B™™l^ doubted whether either of those orators would leave the street corner alive. (Laughter.) It was h• £ y ™n3U chance on the conceptions which* Thomas and Mr. Clynei .presented a,, the speeches to whiclhe'had referred that the Labour Party was de riving such strength as if enjoyed at this moment. There, were' two great elements m the Labour Party. There 3 h °^re, M profoundly cdn't£% 1? il de? tmy and greatness of England aa they in the. Primrose League were must separate themselves definite™»S -K l''^ tUDe ffOm those who Were wt h° ge Of clas» hatred, who knew nothing of economics and les S o f business and were set upon destroying fhn: CC°DOm] C s^tem nP°n which foLit^' o£. -ntry^