THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1931. THE PARTY SYSTEM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20988, 26 September 1931, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1931. THE PARTY SYSTEM.

The recent political developments in New Zealand, like those in Great Britain, arc a challenge to consider the role party plays in the government of countries with representative institutions on the British model. Party is not confined to them. In the United States, where the principle of an Executive directly responsible to the Legislature does not exist, party lines are as strictly drawn as in any selfgoverning community on earth, the party spirit is evident in all phases of public affairs, and the power of the party machine is probably the greatest known. In Switzerland, where the elective executive, initiative and referendum are all to be found, there are still parties. According to Viscount Bryce, who has written authoritatively and exhaustively on every type of democratic government to be found in the modern world, party differences are smaller and the party spirit feebler among the Swiss than among any other people whose conditions he surveyed; but he found parties there, and did not suggest they were likely to become extinct. In both Britain and New Zealand abnormal difficulties and actual economic perils led to proposals that all party divisions should be forgotten, all sections of the Legislature should make common cause in the search for and application of remedies. In each instance there has been only partial achievement of that end. Yet, in face of admitted danger, differences existing in more normal times have been ignored, and at least a temporary union of forces has been established. The same thing happened in both countries during the war. An external physical danger, that of military defeat, was the flux then, leading to an amalgamation of forces which, commonly, were to a large extent antagonistic. Since -by both these examples party in the government of a country is made to appear, temporarily at least, an influence adverse to the national welfare, a luxury which cannot be afforded when danger threatens, it is natural to ask whether the system does not exert an equally undesirable influence on national life at all times. If party differences must be banished in peril or emergency, would public life not be saner, sweeter, more orderly, would not the work of government be done more efficiently if they were banished for ever? The answer is not so simple as might appear. In the British system, party divisions existed before Parliamentary government as it is now known, and the present structure, an executive responsible to the Legislature, chosen from the party with a majority, or able to command a majority, has been built up with the idea of party at the back of it all the time. Referring again to Bryce, he says: "To begin with, parties are inevitable. No free, large country has been without them. No one has shown how representative government could be worked without them." A little later, continuing in the same strain, he adds the following note: " Political philosophers have incessantly denounced party, but none seems to have shown how they can either be pi evented from arising or eliminated when they exist. I could never extract from Mr. Goldwin Smith, with all his mastery of history and political acumen, any answer to the question how representative government could be carried on without them." In public affairs it is natural for men of similar views to come together. Presently they find it desirable to have an organisation for their own convenience, and if they are earnest and active, for the dissemination of their views. So a corporate body appears, and when in addition some form of discipline is added, a party is formed. If all parties now existing were abolished at a stroke, new ones would speedily spring into being by some such process. The inevitability of party has to be accepted. The only system of government in which it can be eliminated is an autocracy, absolute in character, and ruthlessly efficient. Parties are of practical use as well. To quote Bryce again : " The parties keep a nation's mind alivo as the rise and fall of the sweeping tide freshens the water of long ocean inlets. Discussion within each party, culminating before elections in the adoption of a platform, brings certain issues to the front, defines them, expresses them in formulas which, even if tricky or delusive, fix men's minds on certain points, concentrating attention and inviting criticism." Under the British system, a policy adopted by a party is,submitted to the electorate and approved or rejected. If approved by the return of a majority supporting it, this policy can be given effect in an orderly fashion, the leaders who frame the legislation being certain of support for its enactment. If there were no parties, if individual candidates stood as independents in all electorates, how could the country give a comprehensible verdict at an election? It could not he done. In New Zealand, Parliament would meet with no programme to consider, or with 76 European and four Maori programmes." The natural course would be to appoint an executive which would then have to devise a programme ; but there would be no mandate from the country to carry it out. The ultimate end would be confusion. The upshot is that the party system, like many other things in the British method of procedure, exists because it works. It has its defects and its ridiculous aspects. The same thing can be said of almost every part of the British constitutional

system. There are times when party divisions can be put to one side. That is when there is unanimity on one issue, putting in the shade all minor questions about which differences exist. During the war it was the common determination to win. Now it is the determination to face economic and financial threats to national security. After 1918, with victory achieved, the old differences inevitably reappeared. So, if historic parallels can be trusted, they will appear again when the purpose behind the coalition of 1931 has been achieved. There may be new alignments in place of old, but there will be parties, and the old sequence of victory and defeat in the political struggle will be resumed.