THE VOTER'S CHOICE
BEFORE the next issue of the Spectator appears the votes will have been cast and the issue decided. This, then, till the time comes for comment on the result, must be our final word on the General Election of 1950. But something first on the Spectator's approach to the subject. The strange view has occasionally—very occasionally—been expressed that it is inconsistent for an independent- paper to indicate favour for one party rather than another. That is a very singular conception of independence. How could anyone concerned for the national welfare remain indifferent as to what party is placed in power by the electors of the United Kingdom next week? Independence means the complete antithesis of that. It means approaching the election issues with no party pre- conceptions, examining the various party claims, discussing and criticising them as may seem called for and taking a decision between them on the ground of the public interest alone. That we have endeavoured to do. In our first leading article on the election five weeks ago we wrote: " Associated neither now nor at any other time with any political party, the Spectator, as it follows the course of the contest in the coming weeks, will have no party appeal, as such, to make." It has no party appeal, as such, to make. But it has no idea of declaring itself void of convictions as to which party, in office, can serve the country's need best at this time. We hold definite convictions as to that, and shall not disguise them. It is not without bearing on the question of independence that the party whose victory, we are satisfied, would be most in the public interest is one with which no one concerned in the directicin or control of this journal has ever been connected.
The election campaign has so far been unsensational. It has been difficult to divine not merely what people are thinking, but whether they are thinking. It is hard to know what influences them most—broadcast talks, public meetings, the newspapers or election literature. But as the three main parties have developed their doctrines the broad lines of division have increasingly defined themselves. The division, in fact, is not between the three parties, but between two on the one side and one on the other, for, as was pointed out here a week ago, the Conservatives and Liberals are at one in all essentials, and on these essentials they differ sharply from Labour. The funda- mental divergence is on how far the State shall order the individual's life and how far he shall order it for himself. Liberals have been conspicuously at pains to repudiate any identity with Conservatives, affirming with some superfluity of . protestation that nothing would ever induce any of them to vote for a Tory, though in fact by voting for a Tory they would be supporting four-fifths of the policy they expound in their own manifesto. Conversely, no doubt, a Tory would be serving his own principles almost equally well in voting Liberal, though in this case he would have to swallow several secondary proposals to which exception might reasonably be taken. But the dominating fact, of course, is that the Conservatives have a good chance of returning more Members to the new House of Commons than Labour, while the Liberals, for all their 475 candidates, have by common agreement none at all. The voter who desires the defeat of Labour, and there are very good reasons for desiring that, must decide how he can best achieve that end.
The Conservatives' claim to support rests, of course, on no purely negative basis. Their election manifesto, This is the Road, sets out a policy based on realities, adapted to the needs pi a situation created partly by circumstances and partly by the Labour Government, a policy combining sober idealism in the field of social welfare with a consciousness of the limitations imposed by past extravagance and existing stress. The Con- servatives may be elected and fail. Certainly if they do find themselves in office they will and should be exposed, in these columns and elsewhere, to the discriminating but unhesitating criticism which is the proper lot of any administration in this country. Even on the negative side they have a strong case. It is essential that nationalisation should be stopped. To repeal the Iron and Steel Act before it comes into operation is im- perative, to prevent the nationalisation of the sugar, cement and wholesale meat industries and the so-called " mutualisation " of industrial insurance no less imperative. Whatever might have been said or thought about nationalisation five years ago, it is impossible to maintain that that process has so far benefited any one of the industries so far subjected to it. Some are making financial losses, some saving themselves from that only by forcing up the price of their products disastrously. It is too soon to pronounce a final verdict against existing nationalisation. It must be given a longer run. But to press on with a second instalment of nationalisation before the first instalment has begun to justify itself is plain insanity—as one or two Labour leaders like Mr. Morrison show uneasy signs of realising.
Mr. Morrison, unfortunately, is in a minority. " We are only at the beginning of nationalisation," even a moderate like Mr. Philip Noel-Baker can declare. Well, the beginning is a good place to stop at in this case, and it is to be hoped that the electors will call the necessary halt. At the same time they must call a halt to expenditure. How far the vast commitments the Labour Party has incurred can be cut down remains to be seen. Certainly no exaggerated expectations should be encouraged. But it is something at least to find a great party pledging itself to retrenchment where retrenchment is possible —in pointed contrast to the other great party, which contem- plates public extravagance with a complacency manifested by the total absence of any reference to public expenditure in the party manifesto. Labour's emotions in the matter of social services no doubt do it credit, but little can be said, in fact, for the man who lavishes charity regardless of his resources till he finds himself bankrupt in the end. What saving can be effected over the whole field remains uncertain, but the Government has shown little sign of troubling about saving at all. Both Con- servatives and Liberals are troubling about it a great deal, and a Conservative Governmeht would unquestionably find ways of achieving some economy with some corresponding easing of direct or indirect taxation. To reproach it for not doing more than may prove practicable would be unfair, for not only are Conservatives as alive as Labour to the importance of social services, but they must realise that it is impossible to withdraw now various benefits which in the state of the national finances it was plainly premature to confer at all.
Labour, of course, depicts the Conservatives as " reactionaries " who have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Its criticisms are directed not at the Conservatism of 1950, which is all that matters, but at a more or less distorted representation of Conservatism in the 'thirties ; Mr. Aneurin Bevan in particular appears bent on living in the past. As to the 'thirtiq, life in this country was conditioned largely by economic trends on a world scale and partly by the legacy of the not conspicuously helpful Labour interlude of 1929 to 1931. And the nationalised coal-mines, after all, have so far produced less coal than was being raised and marketed in 1938. The fact is, of course, that all men in all parties, Labour, Conserva- tive and Liberal equally, have been learning all the time from the challenge presented by the war and its continuing con- sequences. Labour has-learned much through its experience of administration, but it must not imagine its opponents deaf and blind. To apply the term reactionary to the Conservative minority in the late Parliament is simply to bandy a catchword unrelated to reality ; and there is every sign that the Conservative candidates now in the field will effectively stimulate the pro- gressive tendencies in the party. It is not, moreover, on the Conservative side that the evil of class-antagonism is fostered. Conservatives, indeed, may be able to do something to demonstrate how nebulous boundaries between classes have become in 1950. At any rate in this all three parties agree, that the nation, not party or class, must be put first. Each naturally gives its own interpretation to that thesis. Between them every voter must make his own choice. As for this journal, it has not concealed, and does not conceal, its belief that the return of a Conservative Government at this juncture in the country's fortunes would serve the country's interests best,
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