Unionism and Youth
NT °THING better happened at the Unionist Con- ference at Cardiff than the beating off of the gloomy critics who wanted to prevent the Government from giving more votes to women. The Prime Minister could not, in any case, have listened to such advice, as he was doubly and trebly pledged. But quite apart from that, the policy of those who wanted to hold up the grant of the vote was riddled with a want of under- standing and a want of faith.
Disraeli said that if a political party did not appeal to the youth of the country its fate was sealed, and he was perfectly right. It was cynicism of the worst sort to plead as an adequate reason for withholding the vote that the youngest voters are all Socialists. If they are, they will learn better some day. In no circumstances can the refusal of the vote .be regarded as one of the proper defences of Unionist policy. The right answer for us Unionists to make to such an argument is that youth belongs by right to our party because Unionism stands, or ought to stand, for all that is noblest and most attractive in politics, and that if the youth of Great Britain does not yet know where its loyalty is due, the Unionist Party must not rest until it has made its own claim good. • After all, there is something very generous and likeable in the impatience of youth, which cannot tolerate a present grievance and busies its mind with short cuts to the millennium. Metternich said that a man of twenty who did not harbour revolutionary. ideas showed a want of heart, and that a man of thirty who had revolutionary ideas showed a want of head. There is a great deal of truth in that. If the vote had been refused now to girls of twenty-one, there would merely have been .a delay. The next non-Unionist Government would have followed the example of nearly all other democratic countries and granted the universal adult vote. Even from the mere politician's point of view the Unionist Party would then have lost all along the line ; it would have lost the credit of a generous act, and it would have tarried in presenting that appeal to youth which it is now its instant duty to make.
The last sentences of Mr. Baldwin's speech to the Unionist Conference at Cardiff on Thursday, October 6th, contained, in our opinion, much more important matter than all the rest. He said that in his belief no single party in Great Britain could now count upon a sufficient Majority over the other two so long as the parties made their appeal on purely party lines. " Our duty is," he said, " while holding fast to our principles, to build on them a national policy which will bring to our support the armies of those who owe no particular allegiance and the armies of those who prefer a stable Government to giving support to either of the other two parties." This is a return, of course, to Mr. Baldwin's . original form. Again and again in the early days of his Government he acknowledged that he drew an appreciable part of his strength from those who were not normally Con- servatives. We who hoped passionately for a really national policy believed that Mr. Baldwin would be able to do what he obviously and sincerely wished. Events, no doubt, have hampered him, and he may have been still more hampered by reluctant colleagues ; but however that may be, he still has a fair field before him.
The Labour campaign against the Trade Unions Act, for instance, fell quite flat. We must confess to our surprise. We thought that the Labour leaders would be able successfully, however Inaccurately, to represen t the Act as an attack upon trade unionism. It is difficult to measure such an intangible thing, but it seems that there is a good deal of quiet, -if not very vocal, sympathy with the Act among trade unionists themselves. Although this is a very happy outcome for the Government, the test has not yet come. The test will be in the working' of the Act, for there is no doubt that in many cases it gives an opening to a revengeful employer to visit strikers with worse penalties than they would deserve if he can secure a legal ruling in his own favour. The Act is necessarily so shaky in its definitions that nobody can safely predict that the law will not incline to the side of the employers without any fault attaching to judges and magistrates, who will, of course, administer the law as they understand it. We hope that the new movement for conciliation between masters and men in industry will indefinitely postpone any need for the invocation of the Act. None of the odium which at one time seemed probable will then fall upon Mr. Baldwin. There is no reason in the world why his broad policy of fellow- ship and fairness should not forthwith go on and prosper if he will re-state it with all his old feeling and energy: We trust that he will. We hope that if he is deterred by a certain sensitiveness after the unfair abuse which has been heaped upon him, he will remember that a Prime Minister who leads must dispense with sensitiveness. His assailants need not be taken too seriously.
We have often expressed our preference for the word " Unionist " over the word " Conservative," and we were glad to read in the Observer of last Sunday Mr. Garvin's persuasive remarks on this subject. It is true that Unionism originally had a particular reference to the incorporating Union with Ireland, but it is capable of a much broader and loftier significance, and it is this significance with which the Unionist Party ought to invest it. The word " Conservative " is in itself rather repellent to youth. Youth, with its dreams and visions, does not want to conserve that in which it does not believe. But the word " Unionism " is in itself an aspiration. Unionism is a state of mind, a creed, a philosophy. It believes in uniting instead of in splitting up. It stands for cohesion, as against all those centri- fugal forces of politics that too easily beset us. The world of political man might not unfairly be divided into two classes : those who are unionists by' instinct and those who are particularists, just as it has been said that all men are either Aristotelians or Platonists.
What more inspiring thought for young men and women than that they belong to a party which believes in the union of classes, in the common interests and the mutual helpfulness of all those who glory in British citizenship ? It is related of Cobden that when leading some popular cause one night in the House of Commons, his gaze fell upon a party of young men who had saun- tered into the House after dinner and stood at the Bar in their braided waistcoats and the other glories of their evening clothes. " Your fathers led us at Agincourt,", exclaimed Cobden, turning to them ; " will not you lead us now ?." It is good news that the Unionist Party recognized at Cardiff the urgent necessity of engaging the assistance of youth. Youth has its day, and it must also have its say. There is no peril, but only hope, for Unionism in allying itself with the youth of the country.. _
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