NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13308, 15 October 1906, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

♦»— —— BRITISH LABOUR PARTY. . Mr. F. E. Smith, one of the most promising of the new members of the British House of Commons, in an article in the Saturday Review, states that in spite of the efforts of Ministers to conciliate the Labour party, "Independent Labour in the House of Commons is to-day more hostile -to the Government than to the Opposition." The article proceeds as follows: The present House of Commons is loudly acclaimed as the greatest free trade Assembly which has ever met at Westminster. This assumption lends great interest to the attitude of the trades unions to tariff reform. A very prominent member of the Labour party 6aid to' the writer recently in the smokeroom: The Independent Labour party has an absolutely open mind in fiscal matters. . Our opposition to Mr. ■ Chamberlain at the • last election was purely tactical. Consider our position. The legitimate evolution of a Labour party in this country was postponed for 10 years by the Home Rule issue; it was further ' thrust back six more by the South African war and the Khaki election. Do you think it likely that/my of us, protectionist or not, would become satellites in Mr. Chamberlain's schemes, and so efface ourselves for another 10 years?. We had waited too long, and would have opposed any policy, meritorious or otherwise, which threatened to. prolong our exclusion." These views are common in the party, and they bring into humorous relief the complacent satisfaction of the Cobden Club with the teaching-of the general election. Add to the Opposition the Labour party, the Irish party; deduct from the Ministerial total those whose elections turned on other than fiscal issues and the triumph of Cobdenism assumes its true proportions. The future of the Labour party in England is not easy to forecast. For many years it lies in the hands of its leaders to make or mar. If the trades union leaders ultimately concentrate upon (1) a domestic Labour policy, (2) a sane and responsible Imperialism, (3) fiscal reform, men now alive will. see them 200 strong in the House of Commons, and the election of 1906 will mark the commencement of the decline and fall of official Liberalism. The working classes of the country have nothing in common with its mouthing sentiment, its killjoy control of rational human impulses, and its ardent desire to prove its own countrymen in the wrong in every quarrel and complication in which the country finds itself involved. It may be predicted with confidence that " sections" in " groups" have come to stay in this lloii'te of Commons, and that the Liberal group will tihriuk with the next election.