Evening Post. THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 1930. EDUCATING THE LABOUR PARTY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 73, 27 March 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 1930. EDUCATING THE LABOUR PARTY

On Friday "The Times" and other authorities were emphatically denying that Mrs. Snowden's luncheon party, at which Labour leaders, Liberal leaders, and Liberal, insurgents met on the common basis of Free Trade, had any political significance. On Sunday the "Observer" and the "Sunday Times" agreed in accepting a Labour-Liberal understanding as a fact, and the newspapers generally were reported to believe that at any rate the first steps towards an entente had been taken. On Monday the publication of Mr. Mac Donald's letter to the Labour Party in his constituency provided something very like official confirmation of this belief. The Government would, he said, proceed with its big programme unless the other parties made its position intolerable. Such would not, ho said, bo for the good of the country, which in this trying time of serious slump in the world's trade docs not want to be distracted by a General Election. I still consider that this Parliament should last two years, but, unfortunately, our numerical strength in the House of Commons deprives us of the final word. This letter is much, more reasonable in its tone than the bluff of a few days previously, which had represented the Labour Party as spoiling for a fight and determined to appeal to the country if it could not get its own way on every substantive point in the Coal Bill. The tone of the letter is also much more reasonable than that of the interview in which Mr. Mac Donald may be said to have made his first official "faux pas," though it was actually a clay or two before he received the King's summons. If I can prevent it, he said, there shall be no disturbance of the country by an election \vithin two years . ,\. That statement must not be taken by either of the other two parties to mean that wo are going to submit to any unfairness. I wish to make it quite clear that we are going to submit to no "monkeying." What exactly he meant by "monkeying" it might have puzzled even Mr. Mac Donald himself to define, but it was obviously something offensive, something that it was neither good manners nor good policy for a man about to take office as the leader of a minority party to suggest. Towards the Liberals in particular, Mr. Mac Donald was displaying at that time a specially contemptuous attitude. In welcoming to the Attorney-Generalship the man who had been elected as a Liberal in the preceding week, Mr. Mac Donald congratulated him on his decision that it was a waste of time and an unjust withholding of servico from the public for you to continue to believe that the party with which you have hitherto been associated can be revived so as to contribute something that is really valuable to our public life. This again was a lamentably injudicious statement to make when the Liberal Party, though its hopes of a great revival at the General Election had been disappointed, and its strength was now less than 25 per cent, of that of either of the other two, was nevertheless strong enough to hold the balance of power. Mr. Lloyd George was not the man to take such treatment lying down. In his speech at the National Liberal Club on the 13th June, he quoted Mr. Mac Donald's insulting reference to the party, and proceeded: He decrees that Liberalism is already dead. From that decree there is no appeal, except, luckily, to the electorate. All this is part of a deliberate Tory and Socialist plot to treat the Liberal Party as if it did not exist. ... At the last election the Liberal Party polled 5,300,000 votes. It increased its poll by 80 per cent., as compared with 1924, The Socialists increased their poll by 53 per cent., and the Conservatives by 11 per cent. If we had secured representation in proportion to the number of our votes, our members would have been 140, not 58—but 58 will suffice! The Liberals to-day stand between this country and out-and-out Socialism. ... In this Parliament tho existence of the Government will depend on critical' occasions on the vote given by the Liberal members. . . We have to make it clear from the start that 5,300,000 Liberals cannot be wiped out by a rude gesture. To use the elegant phrase of the Prime Minister, "We mean to stand no monkeying." In spite of the minority of Liberals who distrust Mr. Lloyd George and hate his Fund, they must be admitted to have played their cards well in the present session. They have not reciprocated the contempt which Mr. Mac Donald had expressed for them, but they have tackled his Bills, and in so doing have displayed a critical and debating power out of all proportion to their numbers. Mr. Lloyd George in particular has completely recovered his brilliance and his easy command of the House, and, though the personal distrust that we have mentioned saved the Government from the effects of his attacks in two neck-and-neck divisions,

those disappointments may have been as good for his party as they certainly were for the country. The General Election which might bJave been precipitated by a Government defeat was avoided, but at the same time the Government had learnt its lesson. The mildness with which shortly afterwards Mr. Lloyd George conducted what was to have been a relentless attack on the Government's unemployment policy, as though butter would not melt in his mouth, the chill which a day or two later prevented his attending a party meeting convened to discuss tactics in the Coal Bill debate, and the sudden discovery that the Naval Conference made it undesirable to fight that Bill any further in Committee, combined to suggest that something was coming, and it very soon came. The Coal Bill emerged from its Committee stage in safety on the 20th, important Conservative amendments being rejected by majorities of 45 and 54, and two or three days later the reward that the Liberals were to get for that patriotic abstinence was announced. The Liberal terms, says the "Observer," -are an open secret. Before another dissolution electoral reform must be carried, so as to give the Liborals some fair chance of representation. Immense as is the importance of the problems of coal and unemployment with which the new Parliament has been chiefly concerned, they are mainly matters of domestic concern for the people of Great Britain. But this question of electoral reform intimately concerns all the democracies of the world, and especially those which are vainly endeavouring to adapt to a three-party struggle a machinery that was only made for two. If Britain, who modelled the two-party machinery which other nations have been content more or less slavishly to imitate, can give them a lead in the remodelling of one of its fundamental parts, she will be rendering another world-wide service. But the problem is one of extraordinary difficulty which has usually interested the losers in the electoral gamble established by the present system, but which the successive Governments representing the prize-winners have been glad to dodge. The present Labour Government, though it is strong in the confidence of the intellectuals and the idealists, promised to be no exception to this rule. A few days after the General Election Mr. Mac Donald made an extraordinary statement on the subject to a correspondent of the "Arbeiter Zeitung" of Vienna, which was summarised in the "Manchester Guardian" of the sth June as follows:— When ho was questioned about the unfairness of the present British franchise law, Mr. Mac Donald declared that he considered Proportional Representation impracticable. Proportional Representation was the reason why no Social Democratic Party in Europe has como into definite power already. In any case, an alteration of tho franchise iv England had no interest for the Labour Party, declared Mr. Mac Donald. Mr. Lloyd George may be congratulated on having at last induced Mr. Mac Donald and his party to take an interest in the subject, for interest is the beginning of education.