EVENING POST MONDAY, MAY 25, 1931 BRITAIN AND THE THIRD PARTY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 121, 25 May 1931, Page 8

EVENING POST MONDAY, MAY 25, 1931 BRITAIN AND THE THIRD PARTY

No change \vas made in the strength of the parties at Westminster by either of the by-elcclion results which were reported on Saturday, but both of them supply further proof that a Government which never had a majority behind it has now a rapidly increasing majority against it. In the Rulherglen division of Lanarkshire the full significance of the result cannot be measured because, by an unfortunate departure from the usual practice, the candidates' totals have not been supplied, but only the difference between them. The fact, however, that Labour's majority over the Conservatives, which at the General Election two years ago was 5289, has now been reduced to SB3 would have represented a heavy blow for the Government even if the conditions of the contest had been similar, but they were not. Al the General Election Labour was embarrassed by the candidatures of a Liberal who polled 2945 votes and of a Communist who polled 842., Though on the present occasion the Labour candidate might have been expected to get the-sup-port- of a considerable majority of these 3787 Liberal and Communist voters, the Labour majority over the Conservative is nevertheless more than 4000 short of what it was two years ago. A comparison with the figures of the previous General Election has a still more ominous significance for the.Labour Party. In 1924. the bungling of the first Labour Government and the Zinovieff letter combined to give the Conservatives their record majority exceeding 200 in the- House of Commons. The majority of 1089 by which even in lliat debacle Labour was able to retain Rutherglen has now been reduced to 883. - In the Stroud Division of Gloucestershire the increase of the Conservatives' General Election majority by nearly a thousand is much less disheartening for the Government than the result in Lanarkshire, and they may even find some solid compensation in the great advance that Labour has made at the expense of the third parly to the contest. The desperate position of Liberalism is indeed almost as well illustrated in this constituency as it is in the other. In Rutherglen the Liberals, who had previously polled 3787, did not put up a candidate. The candidate that they did put up in Slroud polled 4459 less than he did at the General Election, with the result that, instead of being the runner-up to the Conservative with 11,728 voles as he was on that occasion, he was now at the bottom of the poll with 7269. The slight advance made, by Labour gave it a net gain at the ex-Liberal's expense of no less than 5783 —a gain which exceeded that of the Conservatives at the expense of Labour by nearly 5000. Even so, though the Conservatives were far below their high-water mark of 1924, the accession of two hundred votes from the other parlies would have given, them an absolute majority. Of both these by-elections it may be said that, while they reveal a projgressivc waul of confidence on the I part of the electors in a Government which never had any claim to represent a majority of them, they show a still stronger disapproval of the other minority which put it into power and keeps it there. Whatever Mr. Lloyd George's sacrifice of almost everything else to "tactics" may have done for his party or for himself at Westminster, its complete failure in the constituencies •is beyond question. The cleft stick in which he had to face the General Election has only been made tighter by the acrobatics whereby he has endeavoured to escape. In kind the dilemma is just what it was two years ago, but in degree it has become a good deal worse. The obliteration to which the parly submitted in Rutherglen and the smashing defeat which it suffered in Stroud still represent the alternatives to which with all his brilliant eloquence . and all his ingenious wriggling Mr. Lloyd George has been unable to add a third. And whereas there is still hope for a parly, as for a nation, which has not lost confidence in ilsclf, the effect upon the Liberals of their leader's tactics is' that ihcir confidence in ihemselves and their principles lias been shattered, and much of their time is spent in wondering what humiliation is coming next and in preparing for the shock. Many of them have fallen away under the strain. For others whose loyalty continues to hope against hope, Mr. A. J. Cummings writes as follows in the " News-Chronicle" of 2411 i February:— They are sick oi' I lie gibes, from the Labour I'arty us ivcll ;is from the Conservative Parly, that, flic Government, while kept alive by Liberal support, is attacked and condemned inside and outside the House by Liberal critics, and that Liberal members of Parliament Jiavo pi'i-suaded themselves to keep Hie Government in through narrow motives oi' self-preservation. The sufferings ul lliose s<"ll-respect-

ing Liberals on whose behalf Mr.i Cummings uttered this bitter cry! must have been aggravated a few days later when they read in the "Daily Herald" (27th February) the following editorial comments on the parly's attitude to the Trade Disputes Bill:— The Liberal Piirly, by yesterday's work, lias made of ilsclf an inferior, subordinate, and contemptible annexe to the House of Lords, another instrument in the hands of Toryism for the destruction of progressive legislation. It has raised itself defiantly on the side of wealth and privilege against Labour. This contemptuous denunciation by the organ of the Labour Party docs not prove that the Liberals were wrong, and on this point we believe that they -were right; but, whether they were right or wrong, the criticism serves equally well to illustrate the relations between the two parties whose violent differences have not prevented their combining to run the Government of Britain during the last two years. That the contempt expressed by Labour for the Liberals is fully reciprocated has been frequently proved by the gibes of Mr. Lloyd George and by other representative Liberals. In a letter which appeared in most of the British dailies on Blh January, Mr. Ramsay Muir, Chairman of the Liberal Party Organisation, described the Government as "beyond question inept and incompetent," and as having "made no serious attempt to grapple with our economic difficulties." But it is only fair to quote from the same letter the concise statement in which Mr. Muir nevertheless justifies the determination of his party to keep the Government in office. For the Liberals, he says, the conclusion of the whole matter is:— 1. That the Labour regime is thoroughly unsatisfactory. 2. That a Conservative dictatorship, under a muddled and flaccid leadership, would be definitely worse. 3. That our whole system of government needs overhauling, (lie first step being electoral reform. 4. And that, while we have not made any bargain or coalition with the Labour Party, we cannot accept responsibility for the enthronement of the Conservative Party, whose leaders have already demonstrated their inability to deal with the crisis, and have committed themselves to what we regard as a ruinous policy. Neither electoral reform nor any other legal change proposed seems likely to be of fundamental value, but the elimination of the third party would probably meet the case without any legal change at all. It is the rise of the third parly that has brought Britain into danger, and through the perversity of our politicians may soon do as much for New Zealand.