DEMOCRACY ON DEFENSIVE

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 March 1934, Page 12

DEMOCRACY ON DEFENSIVE

DICTATORS WHO THREATEN. J. B. Firth writes in the London “Daily Telegraph”:— It has actually become necessary in these days to ask “What is Democracy?” Where universal suffrage prevails, as in Great Britain, the Demos, or the whole body of the people, has or is assumed to have the ruling and controlling power. Conservatives, except those on the far Right, are Tory Democrats; Liberals are Democratic Liberals; Socialists arc Social Democrats. Communists, it is true, abjure, the word and lump together all Democrats as their enemies, but they would say that the class-less society of their ideal was the only true democracy. I suppose too, that. Fascists and Hitlerites might, also aver that their Corporative or Totalitarian State is the sole perfect expression of a perfected democratic community. Where the same word is claimed by opposites and contraries one may be sure that rank deception is afoot. To-day we mean by democratic Government that form of Parliamentary Government which is variously exemplified in Great Britain, in the United States and in France. The startling fact, however, to which even yet we are hardly wide awake, is that Democracy has been put on. the. defensive. Publicists-have, indeed, said for more than fifty years that Democracy-was “'Oil its trial,” but they did not seriously'mean it. Their settled conviction was that nothing could possibly take its place in a progressive and enlightened country. Nevertheless, alternatives have swept the board in Russia, Italy and Germany, and now in the birthplace of the system one challenge after another is being thrown down. Parliamentary government in Great Britain has steadily grown more democratic with every extension of the suffrage. The Monarchy, if 1 may so put it, has become more and more Constitutional. The House of Lords has been shorn of its Veto. Constitutional practice has been subject to continual adaptation, and always in the democratic direction. Those who talk of the reactionary character of British Conservative Governments utter mischievous nonsense, which they can only believe -because they are too lazy to think. Under Conservative Governments the democrats pace has been slowed down a little — that is all. Conservatives, in their turn, have often denounced as revolutionary political changes which are now recognised to have been strictly evolutionary in character.

A BLEAK CHANGE.

The kernel of a Democratic Parliamentary system, as we know it, is that it is evolutionary. It accepts the essential form and frame of tee Constitution. It strictly observes the traditional rules of procedure by debate and persuasion, and rejects violence and force.

Mazzini defined Democracy as “the progress of all through all, under the leadership of tee wisest and tee best.” That was a statement of ideal. So was Woodrow Wilson’s: “If I did not believe that tee moral judgment would be tee last judgment, tee final judgment in the minds of men, as well as at the tribunal of God, I could not believe in popular government.” Something on those lines has always been tee Liberal credo. But a big serpent slipped into our Democratic Eden when a Liberal invented the Caucus. The Democratic Parliamentary system has not been over well .served by its standard-bearers, though perpetual struggle for political power can never be a good school for the exponents of high principles. But at least tee system worked while tee rival parties, including the Socialists, accepted tee principle. Now it is tee system itself that is challenged. When the Socialists renounced Gradualism as they did with horrid oaths and imprecations after their awful debacle in the 1931 election, a bleak change came over the face of British politics. No British party ever took defeat so badly, and tee atmosphere of rage and fury then engendered—combined with the lack even of second-class brains and personality then revealed — created a splendid opportunity for the ci-devants and the intellectuals to snatch the initiative from the clumsy, unimaginative and leaden-witted Trade Unionists—as they consider them to be—and play the revolutionary game in earnest. The Socialist League, for more than a year now, has been viciously tormenting the National Executive of the Labour party. The Executive hate being stung, but they are mortally afraid to swat the gadflies. Nothing more politically impotent was ever issued than their pronouncement of January 25, whereby Sir Stafford Cripps and the Socialist Leaguers are by implication “definitely repudiated” as and when their propaganda conflicts with the “declared policy” of the Socialist curia. They are not excommunicated. They are not damned. They are not even disciplined, or put “on tee mat.” They are just “repudiated” as and when and if. Conscientious Socialists will have to compare word for word the utterances of Sir Stafford Cripps with “the declared policy” of tlie National Executive, and see for themselves how and where they differ, before deciding whether they are zealous watchdogs or ravening wolves. They will, of course, do nothing of the sort.. Like the National Executive, they will wait and see.

GRADUALISM GONE'. Why this extreme diffidence? It is not at all the National Executive’s natural form. Their usual style is to leap to blind conclusions. If they sincerely thought that Sir Stafford Cripps was losing their party 20,000 votes every time he went on to a platform, they would soon find means of bridling this too voluble lawyer. The truth plainly is that they are no more sure than they were at Hastings last October whether Sir Stafford is tipping a probable winner or not. What they really disapprove is his manifest desire to jump the claim to leadership, as those who desert their class in order to turn demagogues so frequently do. The more extreme among them have preached the Crippsian doctrine of the knock-out blow for years, but hitherto they have been held back by the Gradualists. Now that “the old gang” have renounced their Gradualism and they are all in full cry for “Socialism in our time,” they may fairly be puzzled to know where the new prophets differ from themselves, except, of course, in intellectuality and in volubility. It never occurred to their poorer intelligences to call Expropriation Ap-

propriation, and thereby transform the obviously unconstitutional into the strictly constitutional. They have asked for a Comprehensive Mandate. Sir Stafford demands a Universal. They were content, with “Socialism in our time.” Sir Stafford wants it in about three weeks after he has made the appropriate constitutional arrangements to deal with both Houses of Parliament, the High Court, and the City. It takes an eminent lawyer to affirm that there will be no flavour or taint of dictatorship in these strictly democratic and constitutional proceedings, but only an adaptation of democratic principles and procedure to tee exigencies of tee moment. In his last pamphlet, “The Choice for Britain,” Sir Stafford positively takes credit to himself for “trusting the people with a knowledge of his (sic) intentions.” What then, is his deep design? “We must insist,” he .says, “upon being equipped with the power to regulate the life of the country” (i.e. to hamstring all opposition) “during the first critical weeks of a Labour Government. . . . All obstruction by vested interests must be swept aside.” . . . (i.e. The Constitution and liberties of the people must be totally suspended). . . . “The immediate points of control which the community” (i.e. tee gangsters who will compose the Executive) “must acquire must bo finance and tee land.” Those who preach these doctrines in the name of democracy profane the world. These Socialist leaguers never speak and presumably never think of the British nation. They concentrate upon the interests of one class only—the proletariat—and upon the advancement of one political theory only, viz., Socialism. They have got a maggot in their brain. In the old phrase, they are aiming at a “tyranny.” How can you make the State or the community absolute without setting up somewhere an absolute master? It is no less than political blasphemy for these Constitution-wreck-ers to profess to speak in the name of Democracy unless Democracy simply means mob-rule. Democracy in many respects may be described as not unlike tee Yellow River in China. When it is kept strictly within its due channel and’the banks are sedulously maintained in good repair, it enriches and fertilises the country through which it flows. But when the banks are broken down or neglected it spreads . devastation, pestilence and death. Clearly, the battle, for a sane Democracy will have to be fought all over again in Great Britain. In Lincoln’s phrase, “the sappers and miners of returning despotism” are busily undermining the ground on which we stand.

True, it is not the old despotism of “classification, caste and legitimacy.” It is the new despotism of fanatical minorities crazy for power to forbid and destroy individual liberty and make whole communities pass under their paralysing yoke.