THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1931. CRUMBLED AND FALLEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20960, 25 August 1931, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1931. CRUMBLED AND FALLEN.

For several days past the cable messages describing the course of Britain's fiuancial crisis have been

fully, if often indirectly, descriptive of a process now complete, Ihe disintegration and fall of

the Government. In these circumstances, partly as a relief from the disquieting features of the national outlook, it is an interesting exercise to analyse the causes of the movement. When the Labour Government assumed office, short of

a majority and dependent in the main on Liberal support for its continued existence, nobody would

have been surprised if its tenure had proved shorter than it has to date. It has weathered a number of

storms, it has survived various predictions at different times that its downfall was at hand. The striking feature of the present position is that the danger comes, not as suggested so often before, from a quarrel with its Liberal allies, but from internal dissension. The crisis the Labour Government has been called upon to face soon found it crumbling. The General Council of the Trades Union Congress would not endorse the economy the Cabinet submitted for its consideration. Mr, Mac Donald, it has been said definitely, could not command his Cabinet in face of that disapproval. At least seven Ministers were prepared to resign rather than antagonise tho Congress. Though he might have counted on Opposition aid for drastic economics, the Prime Minister could not find in it a sufficient substitute for the united support of his colleagues. The crisis within a crisis, that of a tottering Government, sprang from internal causes, not from the assaults of political opponents.

Though' it has taken the events of the very recent past to show the foundations of the Government as unstable, the lines of weakness arc not new. There have been signs of crumbling before, in the discontent of the left wing, the dissatisfaction of the Independent Labour Party, and more recently the defection of the Mosley roup. But the real stumbling-blot'< to effective action at a time, and iu an emergency like this, appeared when the economy proposals were required to be sub- ; mitted to the Trades Union Conj gress. It is something new in ! British practice for a Ministry to offer a policy for censorship in this fashion to an outside body, one which, in relation to the nation as a whole, must be classed as an irresponsible body. In other times Parliament passed judgment on what the Government of the day proposed. If given an adverse verdict the party in power went to the final court of appeal, the cogntry. i Now an entirely different authority has arisen, one which objects to the "airy, off-hand manner" of the Prime Minister, declares that "this Government was elected by a class to defend a class. At the first big test it runs to make terms with the other parties." Here is made clear the essential weakness from which the British Labour Government suffers. It is not really a homogeneous organisation. It has its in- ' dustrial wing, its academic Socialists, its Radicals —who are no more Socialists at heart now than when they formed the left wing of the Liberal Party—and an element of the ambitious whose party is the one offering the best chance of preferment. Behind it, in the country, stands the industrial Labour movement, which finances political activities, and, by its command of the purse-strings, rules the party which by virtue of its position ostensibly rules the country. A Prime Minister may by force of personality and character dominate the House of Commons, but he must speak softly and bear himself respectfully when he meets the leaders of the trades union movement. Whether Mr. Mac Donald measures up to the type of dominating Parliamentary leader or not, he has been sharply reminded of his duty to the Trades Union Congress. A Cabinet may plan measures to fit national needs, but is likely to be recalled sternly to its duty of "defending a class." In these circumstances it is not surprising to find the Labour Government crumbling in face of a first-class national crisis. Its texture is not closely knit to stand the strain of interests puTTing different ways.

Other illustrations of Ministers being driven into irresolution by forces outside Parliament can easily be found. Mr. Snowden was called the "Iron Chancellor" because of his inflexible attitude over reparation quotas when the Young Plan was being finalised. Yet he has been compelled, not once but a number of times in the past 18 months, to adapt his financial plans to meet objections in his party to economy by curtailment of social services. On one point he has proved inflexible. Ho is an irreconcilable Cobdenite. Industrial Labour has parted with the whole theory of orthodox free trade. The difference of opinion on this subject has coloured the present crisis, but Mr. Snowd.cn has not given way. He has rather disappeared from view. Miss Margaret Bondfield, as Minister of Labour, declared more than a year ago that to continue borrowing for unemployment relief would be "dishonest." Yet, a?, critics have unweariedly pointed out, borrowing has continued, because industrial Labour will not hear of any reduction in benefits. Its unyielding attitude on that point has also affected the Cabinet plans for the existing crisis. As the evidence accumulates, the reasons why the Government

has not been able to stand the strain grow plainer. It was put into a difficult position when it succeeded to office without a majority; but the real element of weakness did not lie in its exposure to the manoeuvres of opponents who in combination could have made its position impossible at any time. It lay in structural defects, and in divergence of outlook in different sections. The emergency which has brought about its fall has not created the weakness, but revealed it and made it of fatal moment.