• A LIBERAL'S POINT OF VIEW
Sta,-7-As a fellow Liberal I have much sympathy with what Mr. Clive Bell writes, and were the general election to take place this year I might think him not unrealistic ; but we do not anticipate one for about eighteen months and by then many stresses will have made themselves felt and it is their effect that we have to gauge. I am not a prophet, but I do not think that the Conservatives can possibly win the next election, even with the help of the Liberals and the Steel Bill. All the evidence of the by-elections is against them, their record in this Parliament is not inspiring and before the war it was deplorable. During the war they were only saved from ignominious extinction by Mr. Churchill generously agreeing to lead the party that had consistently snubbed him, and today many Conservatives chafe under his leadership. The average working man and woman, who have the majority of votes, have not forgotten these things and they will not be duped.
On the other hand this Government has brought the people many of the things they wished for, but an increasing number of people are beginning to realise that these benefits have been procured by dissipating the capital of the country and mortgaging its future. E.R.P. and Sir Stafford Cripps are veiling the danger ahead, but as 1952 approaches awareness of it will grow and people will begin to see more clearly that the party that claimed to face the future and to have a plan had, in fact, no other plan than to distribute the assets so carefully husbanded for a century and face the future bankrupt and well nigh defenceless.
Even in these circumstances people will not vote Conservative, and if they did the result might well be catastrophic from internal strife and external crisis, in both of which situations the Tories have proved themselves nerveless and incapable. They are, however, circumstances in which people may well turn to those who have the same social aims as Labour but have steadily foretold the disaster (economic and personal) that would inevitably follow its naïve ideas of direct action. As a doctor, I am a Liberal because even in eclipse the party has always tried to make an honest diagnosis and prescribe a suitable remedy (even though another party might later on try to palm it off as its own pet nostrum). It is not infallibly right, but it is inflexibly resolved to do what it thinks is right and will enlarge human freedom, and not be merely opportunist in its policies. In days of crisis some people may fly from one extreme to the other, but many more will be thankful to gather round those who have faced defeat with a smile and ridicule with confidence.
Some may think me foolishly optimistic, but for the reasons I have given I believe that by the next election many more than the present 14 per cent. will support the Liberal Party, and the liberal-minded Conservatives will help their cause and their country better by rallying to the Liberal banner than by trying to filch support for a party that cannot possibly win. In the same way many liberal-minded Labour voters may well come to look on the Liberals as the only possible escape from the abyss to which their left wing is dragging them. I wish that, like some of my friends, I could, as Mr. Bell suggests, anticipate a Liberal Government next time. At present I cannot, but I do see a very great chance that a revived Liberal Party may save the country from Socialist disaster or Conservative catastrophe. Nor can I see any other hope.— Yours faithfully, W. N. L. Dingle House, Wins ford, Cheshire.
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