The Timaru Herald WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 1931. LABOUR’S TRAGIC FAILURE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18817, 4 March 1931, Page 8

The Timaru Herald WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 1931. LABOUR’S TRAGIC FAILURE.

It is not surprising that the resignation of Lord Trevelyan, who is president of the Board of Education in Sir Ramsay Macdonald’s Ministry, has created a tremendous flutter in the political dovecots of the Imperial Parliament. The cable messages this morning indicate that both sides of the House regard the resignation as evidence of dissatisfaction with the Labour Government, which is not confined to back-benchers. Only the other day, Sir Oswald Mosley tendered his resignation, and immediately set to work to organise a new party. It is not clear yet if Lord Trevelyan is likely to join forces with Sir Oswald Mosley, but the retiring head of the Board of Education in England, has advised Mr Macdonald that “he has realised for some time that he is greatly out of sympathy with the Government’s general policy.” He admits that trade is in a disastrous condition, and as time proceeds the situation, gets worse. Xot only are many of the leading members of the Labour Party revealing almost uncontrollable restiveness in face of the Labour Government’s failure to live up to a mere fraction of its election promises, but Mr Macdonald and his Cabinet colleagues are confronted by the gradual awakening of the Liberals, who have hitherto shown little inclination to risk anything in the crucial divisions. The effect of the defeat of the Government’s Education Bill at the hands of the House of Lords has been aggravated by the menacing attitude of the Liberals, who have angered Labour by drawing .the teeth of the Labour Government’s Trades Disputes Bill, and this has placed the Labour Cabinet in a dangerous position. As a matter of fact, the failure of the Socialists was inevitable, in View of the extravagance of the promises the Party made when the votes of the people were being sought. At the general election in Britain, millions of voters were gulled by the Socialists, who definitely promised to cure unemployment; indeed the official election manifesto of the British Labour Party declared that “the Labour Party alone has a positive remedy for unemployment,” and candidate after candidate, reiterating the views of their leaders, declared that “the Labour Party has a complete cure for unemployment now.” But what has been the result — a steady and almost staggering increase in the ranks of unemployment, as the following table shows: Unemployed. June. 1929 1,100,000 Nov. 1929 1,285,000 Jan. 1930 1,491,000 Mar. 1930 1,677,000 June 1930 1,900,000 Sept. 1930 2,140,000 Dec. 1930 2,369,000 The result of Labour Government in Britain has been the litter disillusionment of hundreds of thousands of workers who really believed that the Labour Party’s promises could be accepted at their face value. Many Labour Members of the Imperial Parliament have shared the disillusionment. Mr J. Maxton, Labour M.P., said in August last: “Has any human being been benefited by the fact that there has been a Labour Government in office? Some of us are ashamed to face our constituencies because the promises we gave in the name of the Labour Party are not fulfilled.” Then that outspoken member, Mr J. Beckett, said in July: “This kind of thing lays the Labour Party justly open to the charge that in opposition we preach one thing, and in office we practise another,” and it remained for Miss J. Lee, the youthful Labour M.P., who created a sensation on her entry into Parliamentary life, to have to confess that “there are millions of people in this country now despairing of our ever attempting to fulfil the pledges we made at the last

election.” Apparently there are also quite a number of Labour Members of Parliament who have, discovered what has been all along abundantly clear to millions of voters in Britain, that the Socialists in the Homeland used their extravagant promises merely for vote-catching purposes and that to-day in spite of the expenditure of hundreds of millions on the dole, they have not provided a sovereign solution for unemployment, and that the Socialists, despite their fulsome and often reckless promises, are no better able than any other party to effect some magical improvement in the lot of the workers, much less solve the problem of unemployment by the application of Socialistic nostrums and quack remedies; nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the Socialists in New Zealand are promising, almost in the same phraseology, to quote one of the Party’s candidates that “if the Labour Party were returned to power in New Zealand, the problem of unemployment would be solved.” Many months ago Mr Ramsay Macdonald and his Socialist colleagues made that promise when there were about 1,100,000 unemployed in Britain, but today, after many months of Socialist Government the total of out of work people In Britain is speeding on towards three millions.