LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Election Inquest
SIR,—NOW that the voting is over, may a "floating voter" who is sympathetic towards the general aspirations of Labour, but who voted Conservative this time, venture on a few comments?
(1) The Labour Government had exhausted its mandate. There was evidently little enthusiasm for further projects of nationalisation, and Labour votes were cast mainly in gratitude for the past ; for full employ- ment, a reasonably high living standard, and social security. The Conservatives had not quite lived down the memory of pre-war mistakes and apathy.
(2) The Tory attack has been often ill-directed. Attlee's reply to Churchill's accusation of extravagance had some justification. We most of us know examples of wasteful expenditure, but charges based on these have not been pressed home (except in the case of groundnuts) either in Parliament or on the platform. It is the same with the frustration caused by muddled controls. Definite instances, proved and widely published, are worth far more than vague denunciations.
(3) Tory speeches have too often been such as to rouse cheers from supporters rather than to convert opponents. Indeed, what sounds most effective to the converted often merely antagonises the "prospect." What is needed is to show the Labour voter that the privileges which he prizes have all to be paid for by himself ; and that if he can't pay for them, his last state will be worse than the first.
(4) Unbounded as is my admiration and gratitude to Churchill, I wish he would not persistently over-call his hand. He did so in his last broadcast, in which he built a fantastic structure of woe on two obiter dicta, one of which was, apparently, apocryphal, of Attlee and Cripps.
(5) In the next election the Conservatives would be wise to leave to the Liberals the seats which they now hold, and a few others IYhich they could win on an anti-Socialist platform ; and the Liberals should refrain
from intervening elsewhere.—Yours faithfully, R. KENNARD DAVIS. Pilton, She pton Mallet. Somerset
Previous page
