FIRST LABOUR GOVERNMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22563, 6 May 1935, Page 5

FIRST LABOUR GOVERNMENT

; It had come at last! Few of us who had toiled through the years to achieve this object had expected to see it realised in our lifetime. It was true that the first Labour Government was brought into existence by accidental circumstances and not by the will of the majority of the electorate. Labour was in office, but not power, and it depended for its continuance in office upon the good will and support of a party with which it had been in political conflict from the time of the inception of the Labour Party. The future of the Labour Government depended upon whether it realised the difficulties and the limitations of its position. It did not, as I have said, owe its accession to office to the support of a majority of the electorate to, a Socialiit policy. It had no mandate to carry out farreaching Socialist, schemes, but it was in the position to carry ■ through the House of Commons schemes of social reform which were common to the Liberal and the. Labour Parties. The immediate future would decide how far such co-operation was .possible.-'' ■■• ; '-■"■' '■■ ~ . '.' ' Two days before Mr Baldwin resigned, Mr MacDonald called into his room at the House those members of the House . of Commons he proposed to include in the Cabinet. Up to that time I had no formal invitation-to join the Government, but it had been assumed that I should take the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. At this meeting Mr MacDonald threw across the table to me a pencilled note written on an envelope which said: " I want formally to ask you to accept the office . of Chancellor to the Exchequer." I nodded my acceptance. Ishoula think there would be no precedent for such an informal offer and acceptance of a Cabinet post. ; The question we had to decide at this meeting was our visit to Buckingham. Palace to receive our Seals of Office, Sir Maurice the Secretary to the Cabinet and the Clerk 1o the Privy Council, now came upon the scene. He was very much concerned that we should go through the ceremony at the Palace with due regard to all the conventional proprieties. The first difficulty which arose was about dress. The instructions were that we should put on frock-coats and wear silk hats. Several of the prospective Cabinet Ministers lived in the provinces and had no residence in London. They had no clothes in London except the suits in which they stood. There was no time to get new clothes; there was nothing for it but to go to the Palace in their working attire. The situation was placed before Lord Stamfordham, the King's Private Secretary, who was *a great stickler for Court etiquette, but eventually he had to agree that the usual conditions should be set aside, and several of the new Cabinet Ministers went to the Palace in ordinary lounge suits. Other members appeared to have been successful, and managed to drag from some obscurity a frockcoat and silk hat which might have been fashionable a generation before., , t Sir Maurice Hankey, who was extremely anxious that there should ,be no bitch in the proceedings, put us through two or three rehearsals of the ceremony. Everything, however, passed off'-without a hitch, greatly to Sir Maurice Hankey's reljef. I was unable-to conform to the'condition of a frock-Coat. I had once possessed one, but some time before I had sent it to a jumble sale. I managed, however, to find a morning coat and a silk hat. -. • '.-; ~ '-'-''■ ; ; —philip, viscount snowiest. •An Autobiography." By Philip, Viscount Snowflen. Volume 11. London: Iror Nicholson and Watson, Ltd. ■ ;•*