BRITISH POLITICS

Evening Star, Issue 20167, 6 May 1929, Page 11

BRITISH POLITICS

THE GENERAL ELECTION RECORD NUMBER OF CANDIDATES MR BALDWIN’S MANIFESTO TO VOTERS. (British Official Wireless.) Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright, RUGBY, May 5. (Received May 6, at 11.30 a.m.)

It is expected that in only -eight of the 615 constituencies will there bo no contests when the General Election takes place at the end of the month. Already 1,685 candidates arc in the field, which constitutes a record for parliamentary elections in this country. The registration figures show that on the new registers women entitled to vote predominate for the first time. Wireless broadcasting is playing, and will continue to play, an important part in the contest. Conservative, Labour, and Liberal spokesmen have in turn used the microphone during the last few weeks, and arrangements have been made for the women representatives of each of the three parties to broadcast special addresses to women. Mr Lloyd George, Mr Ramsay MacDonald, and Mr three party leaders—will speak on May 27, 28, and 29 respectively, delivering their final messages to the voters prior to the polling on May 30. One in every three houses in the country has the wireless, and it is estimated that listcners-in number 20,000,000.

The Prime Minister this week-end issued a 'manifesto, in which he urged voters to regard the Government’s fulfilment of its pledges in the past four .years as a guarantee that if returned to power it would again keep faith. .Reviewing the work of his administration, the Prime Minister says that, despite the industrial troubles in 192(3, which cost the. taxpayers £80,000,000, and tho trade of the country £400,000,000, trade is now more prosperous than at any time since the war. As indications of the improvement ho states that seventy-eight coal mines have reopened this year, and points to the shipbuilding revival, to the increase in the national trading profit from £86,000,000 to £149,000,000 during the past four years, and to the fact that- 600,000 more people arc working than in 1924. Since that date 800,000 houses have been erected, the cost of living lias been reduced, much social legislation passed—including the extension of the old age pensions to insured workers at 6o instead of 70—and a large scheme of rating and local government reform has been introduced which will be of vast benefit to agriculture and industry.

ELECTION CHANCES MR GARVIN'S VIEWS LONDON, May 5. (Received ' May 6, at 10 a.m.) “With peace in industry established, tin's is not the time to put in office either the Socialist Party, a large section of which is definitely pledged to class warfare, or the Liberal Party, whose unemployment proposals even the Liberals themselves declare impracticable,” said Mr Baldwin, in a message to the nation, in which, after detailing tho Government’s record, he claims that trade is more prosperous than it has been at any time since the war. .Parliament will dissolve on Friday. Mr J. L. Garvin arrives at two negative conclusions. First, that the Liberal dreams of becoming the strongest and even the second strongest single party is out of tho question; second, that it is improbable that Labour can double its present Parliamentary numbers or gain the seats necessary to secure even a bare majority m the House of Commons. Tie adds that no one knows the extent to which the Labourites and Liberals can knock out each other.—Australian Press Association.