BRITISH LABOUR PARTY.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 12003, 22 October 1906, Page 5

BRITISH LABOUR PARTY.

M* F. E. Smith, one of the most promising of the new members of the British House of Commons, in an article iv the Saturday Review, states that in spite ol the efforts of Ministers to conciliate the liabour party, "Independent Labour in the Haute of Commons, is to-day more hostile to the Government than to the Opposition." The article proceeds as follows: The present House of Commons is loudly acclaimed a* the greatest free trade Ahsembly which has ever met at Westminster. This assumption lends great interest to the attitude of the trades unions, to fcmff reform. A very prominent member of the Labour party said to the writer recently in the smokeroom : "The Independent Labour party has an absolutely open mind in fiscal matters. Our opposition to Mr Chamberlain at the last election was purely tactical. Consider our position. The legitimate evolution of a labour party in this country was postponed for 10 years by the Home Rule i«ne; it was further thrust back six more by the South African war and the Khaki election. Do you think it likely that any of us, protectionist or not, would become satellites in vMr Chamberlain's schemes, and so efface ourselves for anoth«r 10 years? We had waited too long, and would have opposed any policy, meritovious or otherwise, which threatened to prolong our exclusion." These views are common in the party, and they bring into humorous relief the complacent satisfaction of the Cobden Club with the teaching of the general election. Add to the Opposition the Labour party, the Irish party; deduct from the Ministerial total those whose elections turned on other than fiscal issues and the triumph of Cobdensim assumes its true proportions. The future of the Labour party in England Ib not easy to forecast. For many years it lies in the hands o.f its leaders to make or mar. If the trades union leaders ultimately concentrate upon (1) a domestic Labour party, (2) a sane and responsible Imperialism, (3) fiscal reform, men now alive will sec them 200 strong in the House of Commons, and the election of 1906 will mark the commencement of the decline and fall of official Liberalism. The working classes of the country have nothing in common with its mouthing sentiment, its killjoy control of rational human impulses, and its ardent desire to prove its own countrymen in the wrong in every quarrel and complication in which the country finds itself involved. It may be predicted with confidence that "scctionb" in "groups" has come to .stay iv this House of Commons, and that the Liberal group will shrink with the next election.