SOCIAL CHANGE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 212, 7 August 1945, Page 5

SOCIAL CHANGE

BRITAIN’S NEW OUTLOOK

REASONS ANALYSED

(N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright (Special Correspondent.)

(Rec. 10.10 a.m.) LONDON, Aug. 6 In Britain last week another chapter of tho nation’s history was completed when Mr Churchill moved out from No. 10 Downing Street, smiling behind his cigar, philosophical and unperturbed, and Mr Attlee, fresh from Potsdam, moved in, beaming cheerfully, and continued his Cabinetmaking while vans were still removing Mr Churchill’s belongings.

In tho House of Commons, after some ebullient singing, tho members were sworn in, among them the 345 members fresh to Westminster, who began to find their way about and listened attentively to advice on their conduct, and the traditions of the Mother of Parliaments. While the country is gradually accustoming itself to the fact that Mr Churchill is no longer at No. 10, hut is Leader of the Opposition, there is interest in assessing how it came about that Labour swept into power and the Conservatives went out on a landslide. There are many opinions. Mr A. Mann, former editor of. the Yorkshire Post, in a letter to the Times, declared: “In recent years tho Conservative Party has grown increasingly out of touch with the sentiments and aspirations of the people and has relied more and more for its appeal to the electorate not on any distinctive principle or positive ideal, but on an assumption that a Socialist party could never win the support of a nation of individualists and small shopkeepers.” NEED FOR REFORM.

He added that the Conservatives had considered it more important to try to discredit their rivals than to present an attractive programme of practical, reconstruction and reform, and lie declared: “If the Conservative Party is to survive as a vigorous national force it must adapt itself to tho spirit of the times and discard the negative outlook which has dominated its thinking for the past decade. “Above all, we must succeed in convincing the country that it has a real contribution to make to Britain’s welfare, that it stands for something fresh and vital in the life of the nation—not for property or privilege or the interests of a particular class, but for liberty, good-fellowship and the conquest of new fields of human endeavour.” The New Statesman and Nation describes the present as a moment when hidden forces, long gathering, have broken through the crust. Such moments occurred in 1532 and 1906. “For the first time tho _ popular vote demands Socialism,” it _ says. “For two generations tho notion ol deliberately organising social wellbeing instead of leaving it as an accidental upshot of tho competitive struggle lias been steadily. making headway among tlie industrial workers and professional people.

“POPULAR FRONT.”

“Its victory is complete in 1945 because, in addition to the solid vote in the industrial areas, many agricultural workers, now effectively organised for the first time, have voted Labour in company with tho disillusioned servicemen and women and the middle-class electors who have lost during the war their fear of being on the same side as the horny-handed sons of toil. Labour is no longer a class party; it is a national party. It is not revolutionary; it is in itself a popular front, and it is pledged to a practical, constructive, comprehensive policy.” Tho vote for Labour was very deliberate, the paper continues. “The Churchill Government has not been particularly unpopular, and there is no lack of gratitude to Mr Churchill in any section of the community. True, Air Churchill erred as no man whose judgment matched liis capacity could liave erred; no other leader in history ever so swiftly and unnecessarily wrote himself down from gieatness.

“True, Labour must tliank Lord

Beaverbrook for failing to expose any of its real weaknesses and for boring the electorate incessantly with dreary nonsense and the disingenuous effort to turn a serious election into a one-man plebiscite.

“But when all the Tory mistakes are added up and every allowance has been made for a swing of the pendulum it remains quite clear that this is the most deliberate possible vote for Labour and a policy of Democratic Socialism.” CLASS SUSPICION. Mr Iv. Lindsay (National Labour M.P.), writing in the Spectator, states the opinion that the cause of the Conservative defeat lies deeper than the shift of opinion among the blackcoated workers. He declares that a large slice of the British public had become deeply anti-Conservative by 1939, and nothing happened between 1939 and 1945 to lessen that antipathy. The 1931 election swept into Parliament numbers of Conservatives who had not expected to have a political career and who failed to keep abreast of the social changes that were going on outside Parliament. Scores of younger men suffered because this large immobile block stood in the way of reform until it was too late, ho continues. Somo of them appeared to identify business interests with the national welfare. It is impossible not to be frank in such an analvsis, because this impression was deeply embedded in the minds of the electorate. With few exceptions the Conservative Party was made up of well-to-do young men drawn from the better-known public schools or from the self-made business men. To the electors they represented a class, and a privileged class. When, says Mr Lindsay, the Caretaker” Government was presented to the newly enfranchised electorate as “National,” the revulsion was bitter. Nor was the revulsion limited to the intelligentsia; one heard it among the factory girls, in the public houses, on the buses anc] in the trains. This question, at any rate, has been settled once and for all. No party will ever again arrogate to itself the title “National,” nor use national symbols and emblems in the course of an election. The people are heartily sick of this pretence. Mr Lindsay expresses the opinion that when every allowance is made for the swing of the pendulum, the Forces’ vote, the irritation at universal taxation and other obvious contributory causes, the sweep of the majority is due to a massive social movement, which, in turn, has fashioned a new political instrument.