REMEMBER TONBRIDGE
I-1 ROM No. 10 Downing Street the order is going forth : 4 Remember Tonbridge ! Had a few hundred more Govern- ment supporters abstained, they would have caused the biggest election upset since 1945. After years of polite electoral shings, in the region of L2 per cent., the last few months have sown a strong and persistent defection from the Government Up to and around the 10 per cent. level; and the fact that these abstainers are not showing any marked enthusiasm for Labour is no consolation. The implication, that they came from the said core of the Conservative Party, is even more disturbing. The losses cannot be attributed to party politics : hardly any- 0 , 0(1Y realised that a by-election was in progress. Party economies is now what counts; and Sir Anthony and his once- rrIerrY men can hardly continue to believe that the criticisms Of them, voiced from every side of the party, are merely t Lac , nous. He can no longer, by gratefully burying his head in the quicksand of Beaverbrook adulation, disguise from himself the fact that his Government is unpopular with Conservatives- rnore unpopular, in fact, than with Labour. There have, of course, been contributory political causes. on r., e Wing of the party is disturbed at the mishandling of the
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h prim problem; the other is angry (as the Conservative women's Conference this week has shown) at the failure to Prevent the abolitionists from carrying their Bill against capital Punishment through the Commons. But in Tonbridge economics were decisive : the economics of inflation. Had a census ISUS been taken of those who exercised their right not to vote, thel Y would almost certainly have been the men and women ;":110 are trying to live on pensions; white-collar workers; shop- N eePers—the bourgeoisie. And very probably some of those who did vote Conservative, by tradition, are now regretting it; NI. ,, I, thinking that the shock of actual defeat in the election might have done the party a power of good. M 1, ..r. Macmillan now claims that he is grappling with inflation. tiohtis .sveek he has had talks with industrialists; he is shortly I., bring them together in conference with the chairmen of the cards of nationalised industry; and he cannot be accused ‘., - tr1 lot having given the necessary warnings. But sounding the iiiuti'TIP is not much use if it always turns out to be the pen- Mate trump, if the crack of doom tomorrow is never doom today. For years now, it has been argued that inflation must price us out of world markets; and never has the argument been used more frequently than in recent months. Yet the month of May showed the best trade figures for many years, with exports establishing a new record. This is not to suggest that past fears have been entirely groundless. No doubt if production costs had been kept down, the export figures could have been higher still, and the country's economic position that much more secure. The record of the past few years, however, shows that higher wages and higher production costs can just be absorbed by industry; and if the choice lay between another round of wage increases, and a head-on collision between industry and labour, industry's vote would certainly go to increased wages.
And this is where the Government's danger lies. Although industrialists would obviously prefer price stability, and wage stability, they now know they can ride the inflationary waves. The Government cannot. It has to deal not only with industry, but with those sections of the community who have no com- pensating advantages from inflation : the pensioner, whose income is related to the cost of living in 1939; the farmer, who has statistical evidence to show that his income is not keeping pace with rising prices; the shopkeeper, who finds himself squeezed between the tax-collector and the chain store; and the white-collar worker, who sees the sum he put aside, for his children's education, being laid out for his children's food and clothes. It is from these ranks that The People's League for the Defence of Freedom, and similar bodies, draw their support; and their appearance promises no good to the Conser- vative Party. It is impossible to forecast what way a movement of this kind will go; but it is permissible to draw attention, as correspondents do this week, to the way that similar movements have gone in the past. And it is worth remembering that, as Sir Norman Angell suggests, the descent to Poujadism is not caused, though it may be accelerated, by the demagogy of a Poujade. It is caused because a Government, by failure to maintain a just balance between the various groups which make up a community, has allowed frustration to grow into resent- ment, and resentment into hatred. Tonbridge is only a warning symptom; but it is a warning that the Government cannot afford to ignore.
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