THE TWENTIES' VOTE
By THEODORE BARKER
First and foremost, we believe that the struggle to provide a decent standard of living for all in a world at peace promises to be an even more formidable task than the grim fight to defeat the enemy in Europe and Asia which is now entering its closing phase. Britain today occupies a very different position in the world from that held in 1939. In the years immediately before this second instalment of the World War, we bridged the gap of Lgoo millions annually between our imports and our exports by income from overseas investments and from ocean-going shipping ; by financial services and the sale of overseas investments. Our exports are now one- third of their pre-war value ; over eleven million tons of British shipping (more than half our pre-war merchant fleet) lies at the bottom of the sea ; more than half—the more stable—of our foreign investments are gone, and our overseas liabilities, now £3,000 millions, and likely to reach arm° millions before the Japanese are finished off, appear easily to outweigh those foreign investments which remain. We are faced with the task of increasing our exports above the 5939 level at a time when the nation is war-weary, industries geared up mainly for wartime production and man-power in the greatest demand. This expansion of overseas trade will have to be carried out in the teeth of competition from the United States, who plan to export treble the value of goods they sent abroad in 5939. Well did Mr. Churchill say in the House of Commons in January:
"We have sacrificed everything in this war. We shall emerge from it, for the time being, more stricken and impoverished than any other victorious country."
These are inescapable facts, which underlie all future plans. To make good our material losses we require the qualities shown during the war. years and not the flabbiness of the blissful reign of humbug before 1939. We are weary, therefore, of anything that savours of the immediate pre-war era.
Neither of the two main political parties can be cleared of responsi- bility for what appears to us as a disgraceful blot in our history. We have read many of the books, which started with Guilty Men, attacking the Conservatives and their supporters. We have formed our opinions of that predominantly Conservative administration which, after tolerating the resurgence of German armed might, started to re-arm in 1936 and left us unprepared even in 1940. But we cannot help wondering what the Labour Party, who were opposed to conscription almost up to the outbreak of war, would have done in the same circumstances. Again, if Conservatives form price rings, Labour limits the amount of work which a man may do. And if the Conservatives number in their ranks representatives of privi- lege, the Labcrur Party seems to contain not a few men—" worn out old men," as A. L. Rowse calls them—who have used politics as a ladder to wealth and influence at the cost of their principles—men who talk knowingly about coal and ignorantly about foreign affairs.
The suspicion of the two established parties explains the support accorded by the Twenties to the Liberals, Common Wealth, the Communist Party and Independents. Many of the men who were complacent in 1939 still maintain their influential positions in the Labour and Conservative Parties. We wonder if the men who Participated in the disgraceful affairs of the Thirties, who allowed Winston Churchill's repeated warnings to pass unheeded, will be fit to be placed in charge of reconstruction with all its intricacies
and complications. These politicians say that it was the apathy of the electorate which prevented them from taking the necessary action. As soon as they raised their voices in favour of armaments, they say, the public showed its peaceful hostility at a by-election. Public reaction to opinion-polls at the Munich crisis leads us to think that the people of this country were apathetic at that period and did not appreciate the significance of day-to-day events. The Press must bear some responsibility for this. Some sections were con- cerned more with personalities than with news. Many newspapers delighted to increase their circulations by telling their readers just what they would like to know—that all was well and that there would be no war. But if the channel through which the news passed was somewhat imperfect, it was the Government, the source of informa- tion, which failed to keep the public informed, particularly on foreign affairs. As The Times recently put it, the apathy was "largely due to the failure of the Government to take the public into jts confidence in good time."
So long as excessive wealth and extreme poverty (such as was revealed in Our Towns) exist side by side, it is only natural that idealistic youth will tend to favour Left-wing doctrines. But sober reflection often brings with it the realisation that the abolition of want depends on more than a redistribution of wealth—as Professor Hilton admirably showed in his Halley Stewart Lectures. We are not so easily taken in by glib catch-phrases on this complex matter as some older people seem to think. My conclusions are, therefore, that we, the Twenties, have not made up our minds finally one way or the other which way we shall cast our votes: much will depend on the candidates' own personal appeals ; that we veer to the Left but suspect Municheers of all parties ; that we support any policy which will show, in concrete proposals, that it faces squarely the formidable problems which lie ahead and offers a practical goal as the reward for hard work, much as Mr. Churchill offered us victory in return for toil and sweat. We do not support a policy which concentrates on pettifogging, vote-catching side- issues.
There remains an important postscript. I find among my friends that there is a realisation that the key to material progress lies in a spiritual revival based on the practising of Christian principles. There is a firm belief that we have advanced farther scientifically and mechanically than we have travelled morally and spiritually.
Without a great spiritual revival our scientific achievements will continue to be put to wrong purpose with increasingly terrible
results. We are all anxious for a lead on religious matters, but this does not seem to be forthcoming from the churches at present. We
hope that the older people will accept us into the political life of the country and lend a sympathetic ear when we offer new ideas. But if they do not, we shall continue to persist, for we are resolved not to throw away the fruits of this victory, once won, as our parents' generation did the last.
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