The Radical Liberals
The Liberal Party's annual Assembly at Hastings showed the Party in optimistic and unmistakably Radical temper. True, the spectacle of Liberal leaders championing the House of Lords—even a reformed House—and successfully putting forward resolutions for the reform of rent restriction in the interests of the oppressed class of landlords, must have been enough to set the Radicals of an earlier generation spinning in their graves ; but the whole tone of debate, whether on world affairs, family allowances, monopoly, the drastic overhaul of the income tax and social security system, the legaj position of women, or " co-ownership " in industry, was that of militant reformers far less tradition-bound and cautious than their rivals to the Left—let alone the Right. The Liberal Party of today is emphatically a new party, with a new party's assets of enthusiasm, preponderance of youth, and hospitality to new ideas, and with corresponding liabilities in the shape of lack of electoral realism Sand scorn for necessary guile. More caution and guile, indeed, might have led the assembly to think twice about re-affirming, by an over- wh and vociferous majority, the lamentably unrealistic com- pulsory provisions of the co-ownership scheme—in itself an interest- ing and possibly fruitful plan. The obvious danger confronting the Party is that of degenerating into a high-minded debating society. Its obvious opportunity is to rally that great body of popular sentiment which is radical without collectivist convictions and freedom-loving without nostalgia for the nineteenth century:
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