The Liberal Assembly By FRANCIS BOYD • L ORD SAMUEL once
attended a Liberal Press-conference before an election, and said that the duty of Liberals was to tell the people -the truth as they saw it. That was their duty and their whole duty. If the electors rejected the truth thus offered it would be a pity, but the Liberal Party could not be held responsible; it would have done its duty. Such overpowering detachment at such a moment, one felt, must have struck terror into the heart of any party manager. Could Lord Samuel not bring himself to say that the truth as Liberals saw it would, he had no doubt, commend itself to a great body of electors, if not to the majority ? Or was popular support a temptation (like protection to a free-trade manufacturer) that must sternly be resisted for the sake of principle ? .
The Liberal Party Assembly, which was held at Ilfracombe last week, showed that Lord Samuel was not being at all quixotic in speaking as he did of the Liberal cause. Of course the party is determined to increase its representation in Parliament, and has taken steps during the past twelve months to improve its organisation. It has in fact increased its membership, too. And Lady Violet Bonham Carter certainly expressed the view of very many Liberals when she told the assembly, as she has said often before, that she would not be interested in a party that was no more than a small pressure- group compelled to work outside the seat of power.
But the assembly in effect marshalled the party firmly on Lord Samuel's ground. It will try to increase its Parliamentary representation on its own terms. It will not trim its principles for the sake of electoral popularity. This was the mood of the majority of delegates. They believe they have a distinctive contribution to make to the political life of the country, and the assembly's decisions had the effect of sharpening the distinctness of the Liberal case, even to the point of frightening those delegates who suspect that it may now be more difficult to meet the charge that the party is travelling back dangerously fast towards too free an economy.
The issues before the assembly forced delegates to ask themselves whether, when Liberals professed belief in free trade and the minimum of State interference, they really meant what they said. The answer given—and given much more emphatically than some of the delegates expected—was that they did. The majority of the delegates believe that the Liberal Party has re-established itself as the champion of individualism in contrast with the collectivism of the Socialists and the favouritism of the Protectionist Tories. Whether individualism will ever again be a popular cause they do not know. They naturally hope it will be, but they are sufficiently .-realistic to understand that they must have a distinctive policy of their own if they are to survive as a party, that individualism in the conditions of today is distinctive, and that if this cause is rejected by the electors the party; as an effective political force, is doomed. Party conferences tend always to simplify issues and to lift the vision of delegates above the grittiness of daily political life. The grit remains, and will soil to a greater or lesser extent those who in coming months have to fight the battle of Liberalism in the constituencies. Nevertheless, the Ilfracombe assembly revealed a degree of faith in individualism, and in the free economy which is its natural ground, which was both impressive and touching. This faith appeared at its brightest in debates upon guaranteed prices and assured markets for agriculture, and upon unemployment. The executive decided to reverse decisions only three years old and to advise the assembly to support the gradual abolition of guaranteed prices. The assembly did so. They did so against strong opposition which included the valiant voice of Mr. Charles Roberts, who served in Asquith's Government, and the opinion of such constituencies as North Cornwall in which Mr. Dingle Foot is prospective candidate. But the soft security of guaranteed prices and assured markets was fiercely attacked as demoralising by Mr. Ronald Walker of Mirfield, and the assembly rose to him. The effect of this decision in the agricultural constituencies will be seen in due course.
North Dorset wanted the executive to prepare plans to conquer unemployment in the event of a world slump. The executive's answer, stated with Samuelesque detachment by Sir Andrew McFadyean, was that Liberal policies could no longer conquer unemployment; they could only mitigate it. The surrender of a famous Liberal slogan made some of the delegates yelp with pain, but the assembly committed itself to mitigation. This was no mere victory of the old gang. A delegate much younger than Sir Andrew explained with quiet reasonableness that he did not believe that one country by itself could conquer unemployment " unless we introduce such controls as drive us towards Fascism or Socialism "—the sort of life and economy that Liberals did not want. Even so, there was one prophet in the assembly who declared that this country would never see three million unemployed again. " Sooner than that," he said, " they will lower the standard of life of the whole country."
Although the assembly came down so heavily on the side of a much freer economy, delegates were made well aware of the objections to so decisive a commitment. A group of " Radical Reformers " announced its existence shortly before the assembly. Its object is to " promote within the Liberal Party the policy of social reform without Socialism which Liberals have developed from 1908 onwards." The reformers took some part in the work of the assembly. They voted, for example, against the executive on agriculture. They would rather conquer unemployment than mitigate it. And even so eminent a figure within the party as the Chief Whip, Mr. Grimond, attributed his defence of guaranteed prices to " a touch of the old Beveridge working in my blood." Mr. Grimond can match any Liberal in detachment, but it is an amused detachment. His attention was held by the workers on the land, and he could not see the principle of a free market towering behind them. The Union of University Liberal Societies—the Liberals are blessed with a body of youngsters who are as assertive and cocksure as any to be found in the other parties—was not quite ready to lay British agriculture stark open to freedom. They persuaded the assembly to promise a degree of protection to the farmers of marginal land. Liberal policies, like those of other parties, are not altogether consistent, and Mr. Clement Davies, the leader of the Liberals, indicated at the end of the assembly a source of future difficulty. He -made a vigorous case for a revolutionary treatment of British agriculture, calling for the investment of capital on a much greater scale than at present. Mr. Davies did not go into details, but his proposals raised the question of the source of future capital investment. Will it be on such a scale that the State must help ? And does not the need for agricultural expansion on such a scale imply a shortage of world food-supplies that the free traders do not recognise ?
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