LESSONS OF THE POLLS
EPSOM has added its voice to the chorus of by-election verdicts (each, wherever a Liberal stood, with its melancholy tale of forfeited deposit) and Mr. Churchill has re-enunciated the Con- servative creed at Manchester. Epsom has its importance. It saw the Conservative majority more than doubled, with a majority increased by nearly io,000 votes, after a campaign in which an experienced candidate, devoting little time to mere denunciation of the Government, put a constructive programme before the electors and secured substantial support thereby. Juggling with totals and percentages is an inconclusive business, but when Epsom is added to Gravesend and Howdenshire it is clear that there is a move towards Conservatism sufficiently impressive to suggest that a General Election today would yield a very different result from that registered in 1945. But here some qualification is needed. A move towards Conservatism is one thing, a move away from Labour another ; and it is by no means certain which of the two the recent transference of votes primarily betokens. A Labour majority reduced or a Conservative majority increased on potatoes or petrol or some similar issue is a finger-post that might as well be blank, for it points nowhere definitely and indicates no road worth follow- ing further. Superficial discontent with any Government in condi- tions like the present is inevitable, and it is too much to expect opponents not to exploit it, but what the country needs is leader- ship, not unconstructive and partisan criticism. The party that can offer that and create confidence in its capacity to make its words good will sit on the Speaker's right in the next House of Commons.
Which party that will be depends in some degree on the fortunes of the third party, for though the five million Liberal votes cast in 1945 find little reflection in the present House they would mean a good deal if the majority of them were thrown towards Con- servatism or Labour. There is every sign at present that the Liberal party intends to continue its fruitless fight, and no one from whose memory the great Liberal traditions of the past have not faded could see the disappearance of a Liberal Party from British politics without sentimental regret. But the stars are fighting in their courses against Liberalism as an organised force. The paradox is that it has done its work too well. The country is a Liberal country. Labour has made its own the Liberal zeal for social reform and gone far beyond where Liberals have gone or would wish to go. And the Conservative Party, relatively to its past, has been largely Liberalised. It is thanks to the Liberal gospel that in social matters Conservative thought follows Mr. Eden, Mr.
Butler and Mr. Macmillan, and Sir Waldron Smithers remains an entertaining anachronism. The standing-ground between the two main parties is too narrow for a third, valiant work though the handful of Liberals in this House have done on occasion. The hard fact remains that the average elector, as a practical man, desires to cast his vote for a party capable of forming a Government, and the most romantic imagination cannot see the Liberals doing that. The most that is possible (and even that is not in sight) is that the Liberals might come back holdng, as the Irish once did, the balance between the two larger parties. Nothing, however inherently sound the balancing party might be, could be more disastrous than that kind of unstable equilibrium in days like the present.
What has evolved in recent years, on the whole satisfactorily, is a two-party system, with a handful of third-party members and independents to sound a salutary note of their own, unconcerned with routine party doctrine whether of Right or Left. It is there- fore the two main parties whose immediate fortunes are worth serious consideration. Labour, it is clear, starts with a substantial advantage. The fact that it has lost no seat since 1945, though remarkable, is intelligible enough. It has, in the main, fulfilled its promises. It has given its supporters what it said it would give them—nationalisation on a hitherto imagined scale. That the experiment is successful can certainly not be proved ; more men are producing less coal today than in 1942. But neither can it be decisively disproved. Any government would have had to carry the reorganisation of the coal industry far in the direction of nationalisation ; no one could study the Reid report and doubt that. The railways are another matter ; there is no ground for supposing they will be more efficient under the new regime than they were before the war. But the doctrinaires can still claim that they will be, and it was a doctrinaire belief in the virtues of nationalisation that put Labour in power. Neither will a revolt against controls be fatal to Labour. The controls are indefensibly numerous and intolerably irksome, but when any honest Conser- vative is asked if he would abolish controls the most he can say is that he would have fewer, and even the fewer could not be few. Planning has been carried so far that the Labour Party some- times seems plan-mad ; but you can no more face an economic crisis without planning than you can a war. Let us have less planning and better planning by all means, but that in itself is no inspiring election-cry.
What appeal then is the Conservative Party to make ? In foreign politics there is no party issue, and it will be a bad day when that ceases to be true. It will only be true if Mr. Bevin's massive sanity is submerged within his party by back-bench irrespon- sibility. In any case elections are not won and lost on foreign policy. What the Conservatives must produce is a domestic pro- gramme designed to convince the elector, particularly the middle- class elector on whom existing economic conditions press so hard, that Conservatism can carve a way out of the present confusion by a policy which will check any extension of State-monopolies with all their bureaucratic apparatus, and economic measures which will control inflation and distribute inevitable austerities equitably between classes. The Industrial Charter, to which too little atten- tion has been paid, provides a basis for such a policy, but at this moment the six points which Mr. Churchill laid down at Man- chester on Saturday demand first consideration. They demonstrate convincingly the difficulty in which Conservatism finds itself. First, says Mr. Churchill, get rid of the present Government ; he knows well there is no means of doing that. Second, maintain basic standards of life and labour, retaining whatever controls are neces- sary for that purpose ; Sir Stafford Cripps could cavil at nothing here. Third, "set the people free in the widest possible sense admirable, but little more than a generalisation. Fourth, maintain the purchasing-power of the pound sterling—an aim which the present Government is avowedly pursuing, if with questionable success. Fifth, "maintain and invigorate our fraternal association with the United States,"—which is Mr. Bevin's ceaseless endeavour. Sixth, consolidate the Commonwealth and Empire ; that, it is true, is specifically Conservative doctrine. The United Nations is not mentioned.
Conservatism plainly must offer something better and more dis- tinctive than this. It can, to begin with, promise a respite from the spate of ill-digested legislation inflicted on the House in the past two sessions, and a concentration on more efficient and less extravagant administration than the country is suffering from at present_ While acquiescing in the nationalisation of the mining industry and the Bank of England, it must declare truceless war on the proposal to nationalise the highly efficient iron and steel industry ; if a nationalisation Bill is carried through this Parliament, through the amendment of the Parliament Act, there will still be time to repeal it in the event of a Conservative victory at the -General Election. Above all the party must make up its mind whether it does or does not stand for the main principles of the Industrial Charter, to which Mr. Churchill made noticeably scanty reference in his Manchester speech.
There is no fundamental cleavage between the Right and the Left of the Conservative Party today. The party's social reform record has always been good, from Joseph Chamberlain's days to Neville Chamberlain's. But its only hope today is to strengthen its Left. Only a manifestly progressive Conservative Party can attract the large floating vote, whether Liberal or unattached, concerned that the country should move constantly forward, but with prudence, not precipitation. By-elections provide the oppor- tunity for preaching a distinctive and constructive gospel. If Conservatives are wise they will take the fullest advantage of that. But it is not certain that all Conservatives are wise.
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