THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MARCH 3, 1930. THE BRITISH LIBERALS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20965, 3 March 1930, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MARCH 3, 1930. THE BRITISH LIBERALS.

Mh Lloyd George has lately received two rebuffs from some of the members of the shrunken Liberal Party in the House of Commons. Last week, when a division was taken on a Liberal amendment to the Coal Mines Bill—an amendment supported by the full strength of the Conservatives—the action of eight Liberals in refraining from voting, coupled with that of four Liberals who voted with the Government, made it possible for Mr MacDonald to retain office. Last December, in another division on the same Bill, a handful of Liberals refused to follow Mr Lloyd George's lead, and then again their defection saved the Government. These two incidents

would in themselves serve as an intimation that there was a lack of cohesion within the Liberal ranks, but there have been other ominous rumblings during recent months that may have prepared the observer for Mr Lloyd George’s threat, as reported in the cable news this morning, to resign the leadership of the party. The Liberals may not have been torn violently in twain by internal strife, but disintegration certainly set in a considerable time ago and Mr Lloyd George must have been experiencing more and more of late months a difficulty in holding the parliamentary representatives of the party together. In 1927 the Liberal Council was formed in opposition to Mr Lloyd George, but the Council did not, until this year, proclaim any definite disagreement with the leader, preferring rather, it would appear, to exercise a mute but chastening influence fay its presence at his elbow. Early in January, however, Viscount Grey of Fafloden, the president of the Liberal Council, expressed in the strongest terms the hostility of his organisation to Mr Lloyd George. The dislike of the Liberal Council to the dependence of the Liberal Party upon the Lloyd George Fund, as it is called, out of which the leader makes grants for expenses to the headquarters of the party, is a matter of common knowledge, hut it was, perhaps, less well known that the council is opposed to Mr Lloyd George’s retention of the leadership of the party. Viscount Grey, however, intimated plainly that the members of the council could not fight at the next election under' the banner of Mr Lloyd George. If the leadership of the parliamentary group should be retained by Mr Lloyd George, they will serve the cause of their party by acting as a separate organisation. The effect of this pronouncement could only be to cause a definite and open rupture in the Liberal Party, On the one hand there are the Liberals, including the majority of the Liberal members of Parliament, who have elected to serve under Mr Lloyd George as a personal leader, and agree with the Manchester Guardian that his retirement from the leadership “ cannot be accepted, discussed, or considered”; on the other hand are'those who, with the Liberal Council, feel that they can no longer repose any confidence in his leadership. The issue of the Lloyd George Fund cannot be separated from that of the party leadership. If, as the Daily Telegraph states, a Liberal approves the one he can ,have no choiee'about accepting the other, and if he the one as a handicap he cannot feel confidence in the leader who is responsible for that disadvantage. It would appear, in the light of developments within the Liberal Party in the past few weeks, that the split is one that will not admit of being repaired so long as Mr Lloyd George retains the leadership of the party. It may be that the best thing that could happen to the party, if organised Liberalism is to survive as a vital political force, would be his resignation. In view of the long period for which Mr Lloyd George has been associated with it, there may be a tendency on the part of some people to look upon the Liberal Party as having no existence apart from him, but there appears now to he every possibility that his retirement from his position of authority in the organisation to which he has rendered invaluable service in the past would be of greater benefit to it than his continued leadership. If a younger member of the party were brought forward as a leader, with Mr Lloyd George’s support, the disrupted elements might rally round him, but if Mr Lloyd George should stick to the leadership it would seem tolerably certain that the interests of the party will suffer seriously.