THE LIBERAL PARTY AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.
T"primary question raised by Mr. Lloyd George's speech on Monday afternoon last is whether it is the deliberate intention of the Liberal Party to make -war upon the whole medical profession. That it is Mr. Lloyd George's intention so to do is sufficiently clear from the speech itself, and under ordinary circumstances one would assume that the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke for his party. The new campaign is, however, so inconceivably foolish from the political point of view that it would be interesting to know whether he spoke with the reasoned consent of his colleagues or whether he was merely giving expression to his personal irrita- tion. The general purpose of the speech was plain enough. Mr. Lloyd George has discovered that the Insurance Act, forced through Parliament under conditions which rendered adequate discussion impossible, is intensely un- popular with the great bulk of the population. There- fore, in order to stave off, if it still be possible, the discredit which would attach to him by the failure of his greatest enterprise, he is compelled to appeal to party discipline. The Insurance Act is no longer to be defended on its merits. It is to be made a test of loyalty to the Liberal Party. In normal circum- stances this would be an extremely risky policy to pursue, for it would at once provoke attack from the opposite party, and the very fact that the Act could not be defended on its merits alone would strengthen the Opposition attack. On the present occasion, owing to the bad tactics of the Unionist Party, Mr. Lloyd George is unfortunately to a great extent relieved from this danger. Many members of the Unionist Party committed. themselves to an excitable approval of the Bill before they had even seen the text of it ; they then criticised it in detail with a good deal of asperity, but with no consistent principle to guide them. They next declared that the Bill was so badly drafted that its consideration ought to be post- poned to another Session of Parliament; and finally, laving made this declaration, they permitted it to pass into law without voting against the third reading in the Commons or appealing to the House of Lords to secure that two years' interval before it should come into operation which the Peers have still the power to secure. The Unionist Party is thus placed at a considerable disadvantage for making any consistent attack upon the Insurance Act. It is not our purpose, however, to look at the question merely from the point of view of our own party. Our i present business is to bring out the political and national situation revealed by Mr. Lloyd George's declaration of war upon the whole medical profession. What is the cause of this declaration ? According to Mr. Lloyd. George the doctors are attacking his measure to gratify their own party animosities. This is so palpably foolish a statement that it is hardly worth serious consideration. It may perhaps be that the majority of medical men are Conservatives, but there are certainly many doctors in every part of the country who are strong Liberals and many who take a leading part in Liberal organizations. Yet on the question of the Insurance Act the medical profession is practically unanimous. The real reason is so obvious that Mr. Lloyd George's attempt to find an imaginary one is an insult to the intelligence of his audience. The doctors are united against the Insurance Act because it proposes to ask them to do work on terms which they consider unsatisfactory. They have therefore combined as a professional body to demand better terms of employment under threat of refusing to work if those terms are not conceded. That is exactly what every trade union in the country habitually does—in many cases with the active assistance and approval of his Majesty's Ministers. More than that, if the trade union consists not of professional men but of manual workers Mr. Lloyd George and his colleagues are willing to give them by Act of Parliament special privileges which place them outside the ordinary law of the country. A trade union of manual workers may not merely refuse to accept service on terms considered by them unsatisfactory, but it may, in order to make that refusal binding upon a recalcitrant minority, exercise forms of pressure which involve a negation of those principles of liberty which the Liberal Party has hitherto professed to champion. The doctors claim no such privilege as this. They do not propose to picket the houses and break the heads of medical practitioners who are willing to work at rates which the majority consider inadequate. The medical trade union asks for no privileges outside the law. Its members merely formulate the terms upon which they are willing to work, and declare that unless those terms are granted they will not accept service under Mr. Lloyd George's scheme. Let it be noted, moreover, that this abstention from a particular form of medical ser- vice does not involve the injury to the nation which results from the abstention of coal miners or railway men from service in the pit or on the line. A strike of the medical profession against Mr. Lloyd George's Act does not neces- sarily involve any loss at all to the community. The doctors do not propose to refuse to bring succour to the sick and to save life wherever their skill can save it. They only declare that their services will not be rendered in. conjunction with Mr. Lloyd George's scheme unless that scheme is amended.
It is because of this specific and limited refusal that the whole medical profession is now attacked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and held up to public obloquy. A more disgracefully unjust ebullition of temper can hardly be imagined. It is the counterpart of the Limehouse attack on landlords. The only difference is that the subjects of that attack were the men who were defending the legal rights of property ; the subjects of the present attack are men who are defending their right to sell their labour on their own terms. As we have already pointed out, this right is not only conceded but is actively supported by his Majesty's Ministers in the case of every manual worker. Mr. Lloyd George's violent denunciation of doctors appears therefore to indicate the determination of the Liberal Party definitely to break with the professional as well as with the propertied classes. There have already been signs of this. The Budget of 1909 was an even greater injury to solicitors and surveyors and architects and builders than it was to the owners of land. Mr. Lloyd George was indifferent to the protests of these professional men, presumably because their political influence could not easily be brought to bear in Parliamentary elections. He was also, perhaps unconsciously, inspired. by the feeling which undoubtedly animates the more violent section of the Socialist parties in this and in other countries. It is impossible to talk even for a few minutes to a Socialist working man without realizing that his jealousy of the bourgeoisie is directed quite as much against the earnings of the professional and directing classes as against the rent and interest of property owners. Indeed, in many cases the former is a stronger passion in his mind. He thinks that he is as good as his superin- tendent and ought to be paid at the same rate. Mr. Lloyd George is now apparently in a mood to endorse this view. He is not given to looking far ahead, though he claims to have the gift of imagination, or else it would be interesting to ask him whether he has considered whither his new doctrine leads. It can only lead to absolute communism, involving the suppres- sion of money and the establishment of a despotic authority to allocate tasks and to distribute food, clothing, and house room. For if money wages were maintained the owners of money would instantly begin to use it to offer higher prices for exceptionally valuable services. Even Mr. Lloyd George, armed with all the authority of the Liberal caucus, cannot yet destroy human nature, and one of the most important factors in human nature is the willingness of men to pay more for what they value more. That ultimately is the cause of the different scales of remuneration among the different grades of labour from the roughest to the most skilled. We do not suggest for a moment that the present scale is perfectly adjusted, but we are convinced that even the maladjustments of our present social system are infinitely loss injurious than the tyranny which would result from the complete communism towards which Mr. Lloyd George's new doctrines are directly leading.
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