Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1930. WILL IT SURVIVE?

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 149, 22 December 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1930. WILL IT SURVIVE?

Writing just after the decline of 5000 in the Labour vote at Shipley, following on the party's heavy losses in the Municipal elections, had given the Government the severest shock that it had yet received, a special correspondent of the. "Manchester Guardian" reported that in Parliament also its outlook was very gloomy. At the close of the previous session members ha 3 recognised that '"the Government was not in the best of health," but were "comforted by the belief that it could only die if Parliament willed it." They had now made the discovery that the Government was dying, and that it might be beyond the power of the House of Commons to keep it alive. No one dies, Goethe says, without consenting to die, and this Government is full of the consent to die. Since the moment when the Prime Minister sat down on Tuesday night after as pathetically inadequate a speech as a Prime Minister ever made in a crisis of his fortune, it has Tjocn evident that it will require great doses of the oxygen of indulgement to keep it alive until, ;is both the Government and the Opposition no doubt wish, the Indian Round-table Confcreneo has finished its labours. But it will not be easy to keep the will-to-livo alive in the Government. This diagnosis was confirmed by the "Nation" of 15th November. The General Election seems to have come perceptibly nearer this week, it said, not because of any now threat to the Government, but because it lias been discovered that, as the "Manchester Guardian" puts it, the Government itself "lacks the will to live." Though both of the authorities quoted'are supporters of the Liberal Party, they cannot be accused of bias against the Government. The leading article in the same issue of the "Nation" presents, indeed, a very strong plea for Mr. Lloyd George's policy of closer co-operation between the Labour Party and the Liberals on the ground that it would result in new energy and greater courage on the part of Ministers freed from the daily menace of defeat. It cannot therefore be said that the wish is father to the thought in the grave view which the "Nation" expresses of th* Prime Minister's personal reaction to the intolerable strains of his position. Mr, Mac Donald, in particular, says the "Nation," shows signs of weariness and irritation. His speech last week on, the Conservative amendment to the Address was in his worst vein, and his speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, which was unfortunately broadcast, was little better. It is not at all surprising that he should be tired. Work and anxieties which only a very strong and placid personality could endure are heaped upon him, and he is not one of those who find it easy to delegate responsibilities. The Round-Table Conference opens before the Imperial Conference has ended. The unemployment figures continue rapidly to increase (25,000 have been added in a week, making a total of a million more than a year ago). His party in the House is restless and undisciplined. The action taken by Sir John Simon and Sir Robert Hutchison makes the Parliamentary -position insecure. Altogether we are unpleasantly reminded of Mr. Mac Donald's psychological reactions at tho end of the 1924 Parliament, and a sudden crisis would not surprise us. The parallel to the position in 1924, when physical weakness, frayed nerves, and wounded vanity seemed suddenly to paralyse Mr. Mac Donald's judgment and to induce him to throw discretion to the winds and steer straight for the rocks, is ominous, and the doubt is suggested to-day whether a similar combination is not preparing the way for a similar wreck. Is the Trade Disputes Bill destined to do for Mr. Mac Donald's second Government what his mishandling of the Campbell case and the Russian Treaty and his intolerance of criticism did for the first? The introduction of such a measure at such a time suggests, indeed, not so much the absence of the will to live as the presence of the will to die. A task which would tax the power of a strong Labour Government has been undertaken by a Labour Government which never had the confidence of the country, and recently has had so little confidence in itself that, as we have seen, its friends were fearing that, from sheer anaemia and inanition, it might pass peacefully away without a struggle. But the unfortunate Mr. Mac Donald is not really so perverse as he seems in electing to hang this millstone round the neck of his tottering Government. The decision has really been forced upon him. He was a free man when in 1927 he declared for the repeal of the Tariff Disputes Act, which in its principal provisions was the almost inevitable outcome of the General Strike in the previous year. He was still a free man when in the election campaign last year he definitely 'committed his party to the repeal of "the insulting' and unjust provisions made against labour" by that Act. But having given this pledge, Mr. Mac Donald was not free to disregard it unless the party released him, but this they have refused to do. At the Conference of the Labour Party which opened at Llandudno on the 6th October, one of the first matters discussed was the resolution

moved by Mr. E. Bevin demanding the repeal of the Trade Disputes Act. Ho said that what the Trades Unions wanted was, without any equivocation, a complete restoration of! the position before the Act was passed in 1927. Nothing less than that would satisfy the Trade Unions, which wero tho backbone of the Labour movement. There was probably not a Cabinet Minister present who would not have been thankful to let this sleeping dog lie, but it was obviously impossible to put him to sleep again after Mr. Bevin had waked him. The motion was carried unanimously, and, making the best of a bad job, Mr. Arthur Henderson then announced that the Bill would be mentioned in ihe King's Speech and that he expected it to receive a second reading and be "partly on its way before Christmas." As the Bill was only circulated on Friday, and "political authorities foreshadow a fierce struggle," this expectation is likely to be disappointed. The Conservatives are said to be determined to fight every line, and the remark of the Liberal "NewsChronicle" that "the text cannot be passed without modification" indicates that some eyen of those Liberals who are usually loyal to Mr. Lloyd George may not be able to support him in every division. And on such a measure the loss of a single division might prove fatal to the Government. We are assuming that the Government can rely upon the support of Mr. Lloyd George. He has, of course, told us that there is "no pact, no deal," but there are such things as reasonable expectations. The promise on Monday of the Electoral Reform Bill on which Mr. Lloyd George has set his heart and the introduction on Friday of the Trade Disputes Bill about which the Government is very nervous may have a solid foundation in expectations on both sides which have not been recorded on a scrap of paper.