THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20421, 11 February 1938, Page 9

THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION

(To the Editor) Sir, —Quite a number of people seem to imagine that the British Constitution is something static, unchangeable. Whenever any new concept of social organisation is proposed these people seem to think that there is no need for reasoned argument, pro or con, because in their opinion the proposal is alien to the British Constitution, and, for them, that ends the matter. Y'our correspondent Mr A. Warburton is a striking example of that type of person, as his many letters in your columns demonstrate. In his letter in the Waikato Times of February 5 Mr Warburton says the measures passed hv the present Government are "contrary to the British Constitution.” Mr Warburton is a strong antiSocialist, and presumably conceives all progress towards Socialism as "contrary to the British Constitution." Well, here is something for Mr Warburton to think over seriously. The Manchester Sunday Chronicle is certainly not a Labour paper politically. At the same time they print every week "Politips from the Inside,” written by Mr Duncan Sandys, M.P. In their issue of November 28, J 937, Mr Sandys deals with the decision of the Conservative British Government to nationalise the whole of the coal industry, at a cost of £60,000,000. He quotes Sir John Simon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer—who was the principal spokesman for the Government—as saying: "This is the greatest measure of compulsory expropriation of private property that Parliament has ever been asked to pass in the whole of its history.” And then Mr Sandys adds: "This Is a sign of the times. Only a few years ago a proposal of this kind would have been dubbed by Conservatives as unadulterated Socialism. To-day not a single one of them votes against it.” "A sign of the tiroes" truly I!! Mr Warburton, of course, may continue his hopeless fight against any measure that may be deemed another step towards Socialism, but surely to goodness he will now drop his futile talk about political measures as beina "contrary to the British Constitution. Just a word, Sir, about the twin sister —or Is it brother? —of "contrary to the British Constitution” as political dope. We are told ad nauseam by reactionary thinkers that most progressive measures are wrong In principle because "they are sectional in their application.” A measure that may benefit. 100,000 workers in New Zealand Is "sectional,” and therefore wrong in principle, but one cannot recall that these same reactionaries denounced as "sectional” measures that benefited mostly a very limited number of wealthy men. For myself, when I read the pratlngs of those who seem to imagine that they can stay the progress of evolutionary forces in. their application to economic and social concepts I am reminded of a statement I saw recently, to wit: "He was the kind of man to take refuge from realities in words.” —I am, etc., JOHN SYKES. Tauranga, February 8.