NEXT THURSDAY'S VOTE
WHEN on Thursday the electors of Great Britain cast their votes in a General Election for the first time since 1935, many millions of them will vote faithfully—or as the more cen- sorious might say, blindly—for the party, Conservative, Labour or Liberal, to which they have been traditionally attached. Their votes will not decide the issue. It will be- determined by that large body of opinion, abnormally large today, consisting of men and women who have never been associated with any party, and are more acutely conscious of the defects than of the virtues of each. Some of them have voted, some have not troubled to vote at previous elections ; millions have never till now had the opportunity to vote. And more of them, it is safe to say, after all the injunctions and exhortations by radio and on public platforms, are still in a state of considerable perplexity. And well they may be, for after five years of fruitful co-operation between all parties the attempt to invent opposing battle-cries is plainly artificial. What the rival claims come to in nine cases out of ten is simply that Codlin's thc friend, not Short. Nothing could make that clearer than a para- graph in what appears to have been an admirable speech by Sir William Beveridge at Edinburgh on Saturday. "The Liberals," said their distinguished campaign-leader, "were fighting for the three things most wanted by every man and woman in the country— lasting peace and the abolition of war, a Britain in which everyone who wanted a chance of working and earning got it, and an insured income for everyone who could not work." That most admirably epitomises the Liberal programme. How far does the Conserva- tive programme, as• regards these three points, resemble it? It resembles it in every detail. How far does the Labour programme differ from it? It differ i from it not a whit.
What this amounts to is that regarding what Sir William Beveridge calls the three things most wanted by every man and woman in the country the three parties are as fully agreed now that they have separated as they were When they were working together. And the same is substantially true as regards the treatment of Germany and the prosecution of the war with Japan. Why then, it may be asked, as Mr. Churchill has very pertinently asked, did they separate at all? As a matter of fact there is a perfectly good answer to that. Labour and Liberals are fully entitled to contend that, though the aims are common to all parties the task will stand a much better chance of being discharged successfully by Liberals or Labour, as the case may be, than it will by Conservatives, and that in any event it is high time that the House of Commons was renewed by a change of personnel in all parties. In such an argument the onus of proof lies with the party which has forced the issue by declining (as, it must be repeated, it was perfectly entitled to do) to form part of a Coalition Government any longer. Labour's trouble is that it can adduce no proof. Conservatives can point to the singularly successful record of the Coalition Government and declare that all they desire is to continue that good work to the end. Labour cannot say that, for it would mean applauding a programme that has been carried out predominantly by Conservatives. It is reduced to such unconvincing charges as that there is no hope of getting houses built on a satisfactory wale by Conservatives. On what conceivable ground can that be said? Mr. Churchill mentioned in one of his broadcasts that the 9 million houses which existed in Britain at the end of the last war had been increased to 131 million --i.e., by 50 per cent.—in the subsequent twenty years of almost unbroken Conservative predominance.. But quite apart from that it is manifest that any party that may find itself in power will do its utmost, if from no higher motive than a desire to retain electoral support, to provide decent houses on the largest scale and in the shortest time possible. And there is no reason to suppose that in the technical execution of the immense task Labour is inherently more gifted than its Liberal or Conservative rivals, in spite of the undoubted ability of several of its front-bench figures.
In considering Labour's appeal to the voter, moreover, certain grounds for misgiving must be scrutinised candidly. Labour suffers from one personal liability, Professor Laski, even more prejudicial than the Conservatives' capital liability, Lord Beaverbrook. Mr. Lash's individual importance can easily be exaggerated, but the importance of the issue his impetuosity has raised—the control of the elected representatives of the people by an extra-Parliamentary body with no constitutional status whatever—is beyond exaggera- tion. The issue is in fact crucial. Some uneasiness has always been felt at the part played in Parliamentary elections by the trade unions and their political funds, but on balance it is seen to be an advantage that the unions themselves should confine themselves, as they normally do, to the industrial side of labour problems, and elect representatives to Parliament to deal constitutionally with the political side in the House of Commons. The arrangement can only work satisfactorily if the supremacy of Parliament and the freedom of debate remain unquestioned. Some reforms of procedure may be necessary to enable the increasing business of Parliament to be coped with successfully, but the changes some Labour leaders have advocated—amounting to something very like government by Orders in Council—are such as to constitute a very strong argument against putting Labour in control of the House of Commons. And any attempt at control by an extraneous caucus would be incom- parably more disastrous. There is, moreover, another article in the Labour programme, almost its most conspicuous article, which may well give the individual voter pause. The argument on the respec- tive merits of nationalisation and free enterprise (actually of course they are not necessarily alternatives; a number of intermediate possibilities exist) has been worn threadbare; no more need be said on the general question here than that the public control of a par- ticular industry is not a step to be either advocated or condemned on grounds of general principle. It may, for example, be a good thing or a bad thing to nationalise the coal-mines. But it is necessary to realise that the step is a serious one, and once taken it cannot easily be retraced. It ought emphatically not to be taken by a' single party on the strength of a probably narrow majority at a General Election. Least of all should it be taken in such circum- stances by the Labour Party, for the prospect of demands for wage- increases by the workers in a nationalised industry under a Labour Government opens up a sombre outlook for the consumer. A National Government might well decide to bring certain industries under public control by a decision which all parties supported. That is a very different matter from action by the Labour Party taken in the face of inevitably fierce opposition.
The clear alternative to a Labour Government is a government headed by Mr. Churchill, and the arguments in favour of that are convincing. Personal claims must give way to national needs, but the immeasurable contribution the Prime Minister has made to victory would be strangely rewarded by his ejection from office on the morrow of victory. And there is much more to be said than that. Mr. Churchill is regarded throughout the world as the symbol of British stability and resolution ; his defeat would pro- duce internationally both perplexity and dismay—neither of which can be afforded at the moment. And at home there is a compelling reason for Mr. Churchill's return. He stands not for a party govern- ment, a Conservative Government, but for a new coalition govern- ment on the broadest basis possible, and no one can seriously doubt that though party is and must remain the basis of our democratic Parliamentary system, the problems impending forbid a resump. tion of party government yet. How broad the basis can be remains to be seen. Labour, it is said, will refuse to work again with Con- servatives, but that proclamation came from the lips of Professor Laski, and since Mr. Laski has been repudiated by his party once there seems to be no decisive reason why it should not repudiate him again. In any case there remain the Liberals (not the National Liberals, who can be counted for this purpose, and most others, as Conservatives) but the followers of Sir Archibald Sinclair. That small group may well come back to the House of Commons greatly strengthened, and it is very much to the public interest that it should, for the Liberals of today stand in the traditions of the great Liberal social reform Parliament of 1906, in which the present Prime Minister played so leading and so laudable a part. They cannot coa- lesce with Labour, for to Socialism as a doctrine they are radically opposed. They could, to the greatest advantage, coalesce with a Con- servative Government headed by Mr. Churchill, and containing such independents as Sir John Anderson, Lord Woolton and Sir Arthur Salter. They would be a perpetual stimulus in the direction of progressive measures and would. most valuably strengthen the Prime Minister against the less enlightened members of his own party. The undecided voter must make his own choice in each constituency between the Conservative and Liberal candidate. Personality must count for something. So must the question which has the bettei chance of success. But the survival of Liberalism is much more to be desired than its eclipse—and much more likely.
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