The University Vote
The obduracy of the Government in the matter of the abolition of university constituencies is to be profoundly deplored. It cannot be said that the discussion of the question in the debate on the second reading of the Representation of the People Bill this week shed any fresh light on the subject, for in fact there was none to shed. A great deal of time was devoted to arguments as to how far the Govern- ment was justified in adopting just what it chose of the recommenda- tions of the Speaker's Conference on Electoral Reform which sat in 1944. When a similar conference sat in 1916 the Government of the day immediately implemented its findings, which provided not merely for the maintenance, but for the extension, of university repre- sentation. The Speaker's Conference of 1944, composed of all parties, recommended without a dissentient vote that the existing university representation should be retained. The ordinary man would suppose that in such a case any Government to which it fell to deal with franchise changes would feel a moral obligation to accept at any rate those recommendations of the Conference from which there was no dissent. The Government, however, thinks otherwise and there is no doubt that the bulk of its back-benchers look on university representation-as an undeserved privilege which defaces the rounded pattern of the one-man-one-vote principle. In a party in which doctrine plays so large a part that is perhaps intelli- gible. It was unfortunate none the less that Monday's and Tuesday's discussions turned -so largely on' personalities rather than principles, and that the plain question whether the House of Commons would be a more effective body with or without university representatives was so generally ignored. The question will be more fully canvassed on the committee stage of the Bill, and the Opposition has given notice that if and when it returns to power it will reverse this week's decision. Meanwhile the association of nearly three centuries and a half between the House of Commons and the higher learning of the country will be severed. It is hard to think that fortunate.
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