The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1932. BRITISH LIBERALS AND OTTAWA.

Evening Star, Issue 21216, 24 September 1932, Page 12

The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1932. BRITISH LIBERALS AND OTTAWA.

Thb political situation in Britain at the moment must constitute one of the most telling indictments of the party system so far as .the present generation’s history of the Mother of Parliaments is concerned. The National Government was formed to overcome a national crisis of an economic nature just a year ago. 'All three parties had representatives in it, but Labour’s left wing stood angrily aloof, while a section of the Liberals preferred the crossbenches, and from the outset adopted a most critical attitude. In particular they sought to make their places very uncomfortable for those Liberal Ministers, like Sir John Simon and Sir Herbert Samuel, who accepted seats in the Cabinet under Mr Ramsay Macdonald and alongside such Conservatives as Mr Baldwin and Mr Neville Chamberlain. The Cabinet’s adoption of moderate' protection as a lever to induce other nations to lower tariffs which were proving so destructive of Britain’s export trade just failed to drive Liberal Ministers out of the Cabinet. With some forbearance Mr MacDonald conceded tho right of these Alinisters to express their own personal views on the fiscal issue without it being deemed disloyalty to himself and their other colleagues. Eor a time this departure from the principle of the joint responsibility of Cabinet and from strict discipline therein appeared to be a practical working compromise, satisfactory to all except perhaps the more rabid party extremists. But Ottawa has provided a draught likely to fan the smouldering embers into flame afresh. It was inevitable that tariffs should be discussed there, and it says a good deal for the tact and reasonableness of the British delegation that common ground was found for so very moderate a Protectionist country as Britain to-day and for such high Protectionists as are most of the dominions. Yet the success of a great Imperial gathering -is made to constitute the charge of a great betrayal on the part, of Britain’s representatives, and as just cause for demanding the withdrawal of Ministers from a Cabinet deemed largely responsible.

Never Las tlio Manchester school better deserved the old sobriquet of “ Little Englander.” Its great spokesman, the ‘ Manchester Guardian,’ has long been renowned for high public spirit and unswerving adherence to principle. Yet one cannot help thinking that had either Mr Scott, sen., or Mr Scott, jun., lived to conduct that greatly-respected Liberal organ through the present difficult position a better formula would have been found than the paper’s present one. Fast changing world conditions make the issue of Ereetrade and Protection less a matter of rigid principle and more a matter of suiting policy to existing circumstances and individual cases. In Britain the industrial centre of gravity appears to be moving from north to south, and the ‘Manchester Guardian ’ no longer possesses the right to speak for British manufacturing interests as a whole. Moreover, since Mr Lloyd George's political eclipse the Liberals have been a minor force in British politics. It is regrettable that the attempt to stage a come-back risks undoing the work of perhaps the greatest Imperial conclave yet held. It is very much open to tiucstion whether the Liberal Ministers have cut a sorry figure, as tho ‘ Manchester Guardian ’ alleges. They the?nselves do not seem to think so, and if their resignation is brought about it will he far less due to prickings of conscience than to pin-pricks from their .own party organisation. Most illogical of all is the attitude reflected in the Welsh by-elec-tion speech of Mr Isaac Foot, in which he declared tho Ottawa proposals to be partisan, not national, and to bo contrary to the nation's permanent interests, and therefore to demand Liberal opposition. Those at a distance

have the better perspective, and many people in the dominions who lean to no British party in particular are likely to regard Mr Foot’s phrases as peculiarly unfortunate for the cause he avows. They will regard his attitude as partisan and not national—certainly not Imperial. Yet it cannot be denied, unfortunately, that it will be applauded by a very largo Liberal and Labour section of the British public. The Ottawa Conference had by no means a unanimously enthusiastic or even well-wishing British Press. The opening sentence of a typical article in a well-known London weekly read: “The Ottawa Conference would be a pretty comedy if there were not so much at stake,” and the same article ended: “Our fear is now, as it has been all along, that the British delegation, afraid to come back and admit failure to the hot-gospellers, will sacrifice the British consumer on the altar of an economic Imperialism which is without honour in the Empire countries, and then, in return for no substantial gain, seriously damage Great Britain’s international position and put formidable obstacles in the way of the World Economic Conference, which is to meet in a few months’ time.” The same authority declares that an Empire Central Bank would work out as “ something more like a dog-fight than a happy marriage of Empire financial interests.” A few more extracts, printed when negotiations were at their thickest or were just pending, may suffice to convey the particular viewpoint; “We hope the Opposition in Parliament will at once make clear that it refuses to be bound by any plan calculated to raise the cost of living in this country, to embroil us with many of our best customers, to encourage the disastrous tendency' toraise tariffs higher and higher, and to restrict more and more the opportunities for world trade.” “It seems to us the clear duty of the Opposition to announce in unmistakable terms, before the Ottawa Conference meets, that it will refuse absolutely to be bound in its future action on the tariff question by any’thing that Mr MacDonald’s Government may undertake or promise to the dominions. We refuse to believe that the world ought to be organised on the assumption that it is virtuous to buy meat from Australia or New Zealand and wicked to buy it from Denmark or the Argentine, or virtuous to buy wheat from Canada and wicked to buy it from Russia. We have no use for an exclusive economic Imperialism, any more than for the exclusive economic nationalism which has brought the world to the very edge of disaster. And, above all, we deny the right of the so-called ' National ’ Government to pledge the people of Great Britain to any policy which contemplates this sort of exclusive Imperial isolation.” It is the propagandists who pen such words as the above who are now seeking to disintegrate the British National Government and finally' replace it by a Ministry w'hich will hasten to repudiate and undo all that was done at Ottawa. It attributes what was accomplished there to partisan and not national (or Imperial) effort. Ancient literature tells us of the man with a beam in his eye seeking to remove a mote from his brother’s eye.