THE ALLEGED LIBERAL SPLIT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 14071, 28 May 1906, Page 6

THE ALLEGED LIBERAL SPLIT.

We do not suppose that anyone seriously expected th© Labour members to muzzle themselves during the debate on the Education Bill in the British House of Commons. Possibly there' may have been some understanding between the Government and Mr Heir Hardie that the Labour group would offer no vexatious opposition to Mr Birroll’s measure, but it can never have been claimed that the proposals of the Government met the full wishes of the advanced Radicals. In point of fact Mr Maddison’s motion for secular schooling is precisely the move that was expected from the Labour group when the Bill was introduced early last month. Mr Thorne’s Education Bill, a very simple measure of nine or ten clauses, had been in circulation before Mr Birrell explained the attitude of the Government towards denominationalism, and the essential feature of that measure, which embodied principles acceptable to the Labour members generally, was the complete secularisation of the State schools. Mr Thorne’s Bill, indeed, pretended to bo no more than a bare expression of principles, and Mr Birrell must have envied the direct simplicity with which it stated the views of its author. It provided, for example, that denominational schools should be bought up by the State at prices to be fixed by agreement, and that failing agreement in any district the State should withdraw its grants and build a school of its own. The Labour members have mad© no secret of their dissatisfaction with many features of the English system which Mr Birrell is prepared to perpetuate, and they are sure, sooner or later, to raise a debate on the whole principle, for example, of supporting education out of rates. If Mr Maddison’s motion had had to deal with the financial basis of the system, or had been sprung upon th© Government without warning, there would bo some excuse for suggesting that a crisis had arisen, but there is •surely nothing in the situation likely to involve the defeat of the Ministry or a dissolution of Parliament. The Press Association’s cable agent lias always betrayed a strong loaning towards the Unionists, and if by any chance be sends us the opinions of.

Liberal newspapers he seems commonly to choose the occasions on which they criticise the Government adversely. Otherwise we are kept well informed of the views of the “ Times,” the “Daily Telegraph,” the “Morning Post” and the “Standard” on each passing phase of politics. We shall not be surprised to find that the crisis supposed to have been reached in the affairs of the Liberals exists only in the columns of the Unionist Press. On the very day on which Mi* Birrell introduced his Bill Mr Ramsay MacDonald announced that the Labour Party disapproved of the concessions to the Donominationalists, and would diwide the House on the religious instruction issue. Whatever the facts of the present position may bo they must have been anticipated by all parties for a month past, and there does not appear to us to ho a shadow of reason for suggesting that the Liberal Party is more divided now than it was when Parliament first assembled'. Indeed the Labour group declared emphatically that it was going into opposition and was not to ho counted on the Ministerial' side of the House. There is no reason, therefore, why the Government should be specially “disconcerted” now because the Labour members have raised a debate on the religious education issue, and wo cannot escape the conclusion that the alleged crisis, like the rest of the political news supplied to us from London, is of Unionist manufacture. i 1