Evening Post. THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1931. "THREE PARTIES OR TWO?"

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 142, 18 June 1931, Page 10

Evening Post. THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1931.

"THREE PARTIES OR TWO?"

During llie three years when Sir Edward Grigg represented Oldhaiii in the House of Commons he was classed as a National Liberal. At the General Election of 1922, which followed upon the dissolution of the War Coalition led by Mr. Lloyd George and resulted in ihe return of the. Unionists to power under Mr. Bonar Law, the Liberal forces were •almost evenly divided, and it was natural that so staunch an Imperialist as Sir Edward Grigg should ■have thrown in his lot with the more Imperially-minded section. His place was with those who had supported Mr. Lloyd George at the "khaki" General Election of 1918, and were known as National Liberals in contradistinction to the Liberals proper or "Wee Frees" led by Mr. Asquith. But in 1925 Sir Edward forsook politics in order to tackle one of the most invidious jobs in the Empire, and after five years of strenuous service as Governor of Kenya he has now returned to London. It was reasonable to suppose that the opinions of such a man on the changes in British politics during that long period of detachment would be of interest and value, and that he might have some original contribution to make towards a solution of a tangle of political and economic problems which are a danger, not to Britain alone, but to the whole Empire.

It may be that it was a premature expectation of such a service which led us to suspect that it had been begun by "X" in an article entitled "The: Hour and the Man" which appeared in the February number of the "English, Review." The writer of that article had been

almost as much oppressed as in the months boforo the War, on periodical returns to England from abroad, by a lack of any public realisation that a disaster is impending.

It was the "sheer inability to read the signs of the times" that most impressed a writer whose perception had been quickened 'by residence abroad. "

There were people in 1914, he-wrote, who scarcely realised that we were engaged in anything more serious than tho usual "sort of a war until they found that they could not take (heir Continental holidays as arranged. I am not sure that there will be any general and complete realisatibii of tlie disaster which now impends as long ats the man in the street can still decide which cinema he will patronise on Saturday, and the man in suburbia where ho will play golf, and the man in the super-fiat to what Continental resort he will drift at Easter. It may be theoretically very terrible that there should be two and a half millions of unemployed, but are the cinemas empty in industrial towns, do haggard men and women in threadbare clothes drag themselves wearily from works to works imploring to be taken on? It may bb Serious that British foreign imports should be down for 1930 by scores of millions of pounds, but the retail butcher at ,the corner has bought a new car, and the pastrycook opposite has a new plateglass front of tho very latest and most expensive type. , '

The gravity of the position is here, stated with an emphasis which is rarely heard from the public men of Britain, but has since been repeated in the pamphlet "Three Parties or Two?" which bears Sir Edward Grigg's name. In this pamphlet, according to the abstract which the' "Times" published on the Bth May, he appeals to Conservatives and Liberals

to pursue a common line of action for the re-establishment of national welfare and Imperial security, which he believes to bo imperilled to-day as never before for 150 years. In his opinion, no single party as at present constituted can avert tho "peril within our gates, within our very minds." Tho task demands a national effort comparable in mind and temper, if not in scale, to that which won the "War.

An exceptionally vivid appreciation of the danger of the nation would in itself, however, convey no suggestion of a common authorship of the pamphlet- and the article from which we have quoted. What is of more significance is that the article and the pamphlet are agreed in advocating a remedy which we had not seen suggested before. Both dismiss the idea of a Coalition Government in the ordinary sense as impossible, and both look to the Liberal-Unionist movement of 1886 as the- model on which an effective co-operation could be established between the Conservatives and the Liberal Right Wing, both in Parliament and at the General Election. It should, indeed, be common ground for the two sections of Liberals that complete independence of the party can never be restored. Intransigence may serve the majority for the term of the present Parliament, but not longer. As Sir [Edward Grigg argues in his article on "Should Liberal Unionism be Revived?" in the May "Nineteenth | Century":—

For no section of Liberals is an intransigent; course r'oally practicable exeopt for the life of this Parliament. Mr. Lloyd Georgo publicly, emphasised that fact in his address to the Members and Candidates' Association immediately boforo tho Easter recess. In view of. that fact, he is leading tho party into organised co-operation with the Loft. There is no effective counter to this—no counter, that is, that will enable right-wing Liberalism to exercise any influence beyond the life oj; this Parliament-—except organised co-operation with tho Right.

Is it not time that such Liberals as Lord Grey and Sir John Simon took a leaf out of Mr. Lloyd George's book and prepared for the inevit-

able in llie manner suggested? It is, however, not really a Lloyd George model but a Havtington-Cliaraberlain model that Sir Edward Grigg invites them lo copy. The Liberal Unionists who seceded from Gladstone on the Home Rule issue in 1886 retained their own organisation and ran their own candidates even after some of them had been admitted to a Conservative Cabinet. Applying that precedent to the present position. Sir Edward Grigg emphasises two conditions:—

(1) That there shall be no compromise; upon the essential principles of the Conservative policy of fiscal reform.

(2) That Bight .Wing Liberals shall establish an organisation distinct from tho Liberal organisation, and shall act with the Conservative Party in defeating the Socialist Administration in this Parliament1 aiid at tho election which ensues.

The arrangement by which Unionists and Liberal Unionists avoided mutual conflict in the constituencies is another vital point in tlie 1886 model, and here again the Right Wing Liberals of to-day have the example of their rivals as well as of their predecessors to encourage them.

On this point "The Times" of the Bth May comments as follows in its editorial review of Sir Edward Grigg's pamphlet:—

The official leaders of both tho Liberal find the Socialist parties have in practice drafted and signed the terms of their political co-operation. There was no Liberal candidate at Ashton-under-Lyne, and no Socialist candidate at Scarborough. In the House of Commons both parties agree to preach tho virtues of the Economy Committee and to practise the vices of continued extravagance. . . . The truth is that Mr. Lloyd George by his election policy in 192 D and by his subsequent policy has erased retrenchment from the Liberal faith, and that, while alliance with a spendthrift Government is perfectly consistent in him, no Liberal who still believes in- retrenchment can consistently follow him.

The Liberals who championed economy have become the instruments of a profligate and demoralising extravagance. Tlie Liberals who two years ago claimed to "stand between tills country and out-and-out Socialism" have plunged it in Socialism up to the neck. Such are ihe effects upon consistency, honesty, prosperity, and security of tlie three-party system!