DO POLITICAL PROGRAMMES PAY? A FTER reading the twentieth annual report
of the National Liberal Federation, which is to be pre- sented to the Council of the Federation at Leicester in the course of a, few days, many good Liberals must, we should imagine, ask themselves for what purpose the National Liberal Federation exists at all. Established in 1877, the Federation was supposed to unite in one vast organisation the various local caucuses which were being formed on modified American lines. But from the year 1883, when the famous Franchise Conference called by the Federation was held at Leeds, it was generally assumed by Liberals that the Federation was not simply a large union of local organisations, but an exponent of average Liberal feeling as to policy. The Federation itself certainly confirmed this general impression by its action. When the Home- rule split took place in 1886, the Federation, after a bitter and exciting controversy, was captured by the Home-rule section ; it formally approved of Mr. Gladstone's policy, and it actively propagated that policy all over England. In the following year, at Nottingham, it put forward what was understood to be a programme which had been formulated by its Committee, and which was imme- diately denounced by the more ardent spirits as being far too meagre. Conference after conference was held every year, each attended by Mr. Gladstone as leader of the party, until the celebrated Conference at Newcastle in 1891. At that Conference a large and varied political bill- of-fare was submitted and enthusiastically adopted. Many of the items in the long list represented, as we have reason to know, but the tiniest fraction of genuine opinion, resolutions for this, that, or the other item being submitted to the Federation by little knots of practically non - representative people. The Federation, however, accepted these, in some cases after prolonged squabbles in the inner circles of the General Committee, they were voted by the Newcastle meeting as a whole, and they came to be collectively known as the " Newcastle Programme." That these varied, and sometimes contra- dictory, items were intended to win the then forth- coming General Election by appealing to groups here and there whose support was needed, cannot seriously be denied ; and it is probable that some of these items did help to accomplish that purpose. Nobody doubted that the Newcastle document did represent what can only be described as an official programme, the more so as it was immediately approved by Mr. Gladstone and by other prominent men in the party.
But now, nearly seven years after this inconsistent body of doctrine was set before the country, and after a second General Election has proved that it was less efficacious than its artificers imagined, the General Com- mittee of the Federation come forward and deny that there is, or ever has been, such a thing as a Newcastle Programme at all. Mrs. Prig was not more unbelieving as regards the existence of Mrs. Harris than are the .General Committee of the Federation as regards the pro. .gramme they were supposed to have fathered, if not begotten. "No Newcastle Programme," says the Com- mittee's report, "was ever framed by the Federation, or by any one connected with it; no programme what- ever was presented at the annual Council meeting at Newcastle or elsewhere, or at any other meeting -of the Federation, whether Council, Conference, or Com- mittee." The famous document, then, is a stupendous myth, exploded by the "higher criticism" of the Federa- tion's skilful Committee ; and so arduous a task have these learned experts had before them, that it has taken six and a half years to place the result of their researches before the simple Liberals who had previously as devoutly believed in the plenary inspiration of the Council at New- castle as the sincere Catholic believes in the inspired decrees of the Council of Nicrea! When we recover our breath, however, we cannot help saying to ourselves that there was a document approved by a big meeting at Newcastle 'at which both Council and Committee were represented. What was that document and what did it mean ? It seems that this and other " programmes " are formulas "believed to express the wishes of the vast majority of the Liberal party upon the leading questions of the day." These resolutions, initiated in a way not indicated, "are prepared by the Executive Committee aft,r consultation with all the federated Associations." Well, if the thing called for nearly seven years without contradiction the Newcastle Programme was " prepared " by the Com- mittee of the Federation after " consultation " with the hundreds of caucuses which make up the Federation, the difference between such a course and the responsibility so indignantly repudiated by the report is like unto the difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. We feel that, after all, the common impression is right as against the critical denial of the report ; we have not been dreaming, we have not been wholly misled by later glosses and interpolations,—the Newcastle Programme is a solid historical fact and not a myth of a too imaginative Radicalism.
It has been said that the three hardest words for any man to utter are "I was wrong." The formula is cer- tainly a difficult one for politicians. The fact is that the National Liberal Federation leaders, after nearly seven years of critical meditation, have discovered that the New- -castle Programme is of no use to their party, and they want to repudiate it. That is the long and the short of the whole matter, but the leaders are too proud to say so. They have not the moral courage to admit that they were wrong. They encouraged the idea of a party programme, adopted by the Federation at Newcastle, used at countless election contests, intended to appeal to sectional groups, so long as it was useful; at any rate they never once, to our recollection, discouraged the idea. During all these years the "Newcastle Programme" has been a battle-cry, recognised alike by friends and foes, and it has never been repudiated till this day. How much more honest and dignified would political life become if politicians would candidly say, "We were wrong, we have changed our minds ! " It is not only no disgrace to change one's mind, it is a moral duty if the evidence for such a course is overwhelming. But inconsistency in action, combined with a lip-profession of consistency in opinion, is the badge of most of the political tribe. The Federation leaders have since those halcyon days on the Tyne in 1891 discovered many things. They have found out that England is not ablaze (nor Ireland either, for that matter) about a College-Green Parliament ; that Liberals who hold brewery shares are not burning with zeal for Local Veto ; that railway men would, as a rule, much sooner work overtime than have their hours reduced by Act of Parliament; and that " social " measures can never form the dividing line between parties. These changes, all embodied in the "prepared" resolutions commonly known as the Newcastle Programme, are now being thrust aside as inconvenient, but the leaders do not like to say so. That is evidently the whole truth of the matter, and we see that so energetic a Liberal as Sir Robert Reid, who apparently does believe sincerely in the Newcastle Programme, takes this view of the action of the over-critical sages of the Federation.
We do not doubt that, as a matter of fact, the second thoughts of the Federation leaders are the wiser. They have been a long while in discovering what was obvious to plain people some time ago. They remind us of what Lowell said of Webster in the " Biglow Papers" :— " It takes a mind like Dan'l's, fact, as big as all out-doors, To find out it's begun to rain after it fairly pours."
But even a death-bed conversion must be accepted, and the conversion of the Federation leaders to the idea that " programmes " do not in reality help a. party at elections in the long-run, and that the leader of the party will, as a matter of fact, and must, as a matter of necessity, deter- mine the programme,—the conversion to this idea, we say, is evidence of prudence and insight, if not of heroism, in the leaders of the National Liberal Federation. Did resolutions, concocted by small and often self-elected caucuses, " prepared " or otherwise by a central caucus, place the Free Corn programme of Peel in 1846, or the great Budget proposals of Mr. Gladstone in 1853, or the Irish Church programme of 1868 before the country ? Not a bit of it. These and other proposals were formu- lated by great leaders in whom millions of men had con- fidence, called forth by commanding services, intellect, and character. Let the Liberal party find or evolve such a leader, and there will be no trouble about programmes, or "prepared" resolutions, or critical disputes as to whether a committee or a council or a conference was responsible for this or that. But if this view is true, what becomes of the functions of the Council and Com- mittee of the Federation ? For what real purpose are its conferences held ? Hitherto, the average Liberal delegate at these gatherings has sincerely believed that he and his fellow-delegates were "making history," that their resolutions meant something, that they were, so to speak, issuing their sovereign mandate to the so-called leaders as to what was to be done. Now they are told by their own guides, the critical experts who interpret their documents, that the resolutions passed do not mean any- thing in particular, that they are harmless expressions of sentiment to which Sir William Harcourt may or may not pay any attention, as he happens to think fit. It is, we say, a wise conclusion as regards the party, but it is a blow struck at the legendary prestige of the National Liberal Federation, whose occupation is now of a very shadowy nature. But that also is not, perhaps, a bad thing for a party which was created by ideas and which has declined through wirepulling.
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