TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE UNIONIST PARTY THE fear so often expressed of late that Mr. Lloyd George may, without intending it, do for the Unionist Party what he did for the Liberal Party—that is, first devitalize and then destroy it—is proving to be well founded. The fact that the official Unionist candidate, supported by all the power of that party, should have been beaten in the St. George's Division of Westminster is a fact the significance of which can hardly be exaggerated. The constituency is one which may be described as Unionist from top to toe. It is full to the brim of well-educated, well-to-do people ; and though no doubt there are a great many more poor than rich voters, as is the case in every constituency, in St. George's, the poorer inhabitants are by tradition and by instinct quite as strong adherents of the Unionist Party as their richer neighbours.
Yet in this stronghold of Unionism—the constituency which has again and again been used to find a Cabinet Minister an absolutely safe seat—the official Unionist candidate has been defeated by a majority of close upon 2,000. It cannot be said that this astonishing result is due to the personal merits of the winning candidate. We have nothing to say against Mr. Erskine, but he was quite unknown to the constituency before the sudden vacancy occurred, and no one pretends that he has oratorical gifts so tremendous that they bewitch mankind. Again, he had no supporters in the great world who would have been likely to have impressed the shops or the mews or the garages of Mayfair and Belgravia. The only people who claim to have influenced the electorate are Mr. Bottomley and Lord Rothermere, but as to whether the claim of either can be made good, and if so, whether John Bull or the Daily Mirror comes out the winner, we have no opinion to offer. Very possibly in both cases the claim is like that of a man who because he backed the winner thinks that somehow he contributed to the winning of the race. Obviously, people voted for Mr. Erskine because they wanted to vote in opposition to the Coalition Government. If we look at the matter from the other side, it is even worse for the Ministry. Sir H. M. Jesse', besides having all the weight of the machine cast on his side, was very well known in the constituency, as, indeed, throughout London. He is chief party organizer in the metropolis, and exercises great influence in all Parliamentary and Municipal elections. Not only is he an expert in organization, but he had at his command all the best political " workers " in the metropolis. A more formidable candidate could not have been chosen. .It is indeed not too much to say of him that, except in the case of an electoral landslide, nobody could have defeated him. He was only beaten because the Unionists of the most Unionist constituency in the Kingdom had determined to give the Unionist Party a lesson.
What are the grounds which have suddenly produced this sense of imperative dissatisfaction with the official Unionists and with Mr. Lloyd George's Government ? We believe that the grounds for this electoral revolution— we can hardly call it anything else—are almost exactly those which we have urged in the Spectator during many months. The Unionist Party as a whole still retain a great deal of personal admiration for and gratitude to Mr. Lloyd George. They admire the courage and resource which he has shown in the past, his skilful management at Versailles and Paris, and his ingenuity in the House of Commons, and, most of all, the transcendant diplomatic ability with which he managed to settle the matter of the German indemnity without, on the one hand, imposing impossible terms on our late enemies, or, on the other hand, making the nearest section of our Allies feel that we had in any true sense betrayed them. But though the rank and file of the Unionist Party are not ungrateful to Mr. Lloyd George, and though we are con- vinced they have no liking for any of his political opponents, whether they be Wee Frees, or members of 'the Labour Party, or certain rivals and " underminers " in his own Cabinet, they are deeply dissatisfied with the trend of home policy which has of late been exhibited. With that instinct which often guides men in the mass with more decision and self-assurance than it does in the case of the individuals which compose the mass, the rank and file of the Unionists are beginning to realize that the peril of the nation is very great, and that unless that peril is fully realized and faced, and encountered with the appropriate remedy, we may see the ship of State so badly handled that she will be run under " and destroyed. They are not satisfied with their steersman.
" A daring Pilot in extremity
Pleased with the danger when tho waves ran high. He sought the storms ; but, for a Calm unfit, Would steer too near the Sands to boast his wit."
They see that the time for care, sanity, and the avoidance of risks rather than their gay acceptance should be the order of the day. Above all, they realize that the first, the most urgent, call of the hour is the avoidance c4 revolution, but they also realize that the main causes of revolutions are : (1) National bankruptcy ; (2) weakness and instability of Government ; (3) inability of rulers to maintain a safe and fixed course. In the matter of bankruptcy, the nation is greatly alarmed, and most rightly. Men know that they have to endure very high taxation. But they see this taxation being applied with a recklessness which staggers them not only by its want of consideration for the victims, but, what is worse, by its want of consideration of the essential fact that you can dry up the source of the river of wealth if you tax too highly and tax in the wrong way. Taxes which cause great suffering to in- dividuals may, from the national point of view, have to be endured. What is unendurable is the taxation which kills industry and enterprise, and makes that reasonable speculation upon which commerce lives impossible. We are rapidly reaching this point, and yet the Government, instead of seeing it as the nation itself does, appears to think there is no danger. Again and again defenders of the Ministry use the fatal word in economic matters, " We must spend on this. We must incur this extra cost." The only thing in regard to which they never say " must " is refraining from increased taxation. We never hear " We must reduce taxation " or " We must not borrow more money either directly or indirectly." Instinctively, also, the Unionist rank and file, and this means two-thirds of the voters in England and more than one-half in Scotland, feel that the Government, though no doubt with the best intentions, have shown confusion of thought, want of coherent policy, and lack of decision not only in their handling of Ireland, but also in their dealings with the extremists and avowed revolutionaries of the Labour Party. Take only one example. The Unionists feel that the Government made the most appalling blunder in not dealing much more firmly with the purely revolutionary challenge to the authority of the British democracy made by those who set up the Council of Action. Those who committed this. outrage on the Constitution told us in plain terms that if our policy abroad was not altered, they would compel acquiescence in their demands by a general strike. Such Direct Action would, of course, have been followed by dictation of a similar kind in regard to home policy. 'We were, in a word, to be ruled not in accordance with the will of the voters, but in accordance with that of the organ- ized section of the manual labourers—a minority not only of the nation but of the workers.
To treat such an act of treason to democracy, for such it was and is, as though it did not matter was a staggering blow to the prestige of the Government. Their conduct could not be defended on the grounds that the formation of the Council of Action was mere talk, the babble of the political auction room. The Council was not only formed, but an elaborate organization was drawn up under which it was to function, and to function in a revolutionary sense.
If the instinctive anxiety of the Unionists is great in matters of the present, it is still greater in regard to the future. The Unionists see the position of their party being daily, almost hourly, undermined by the course of events, and by Mr. Lloyd George's curious unwillingness to throw in his lot wholeheartedly with the great majority of those who have supported him so loyally in the past. Further, while they see their own party suffering from a kind of progressive anaemia; they see nothing ready to take its place when the final stage of inanition has been reached. They- do not care about names, but they do care about things. If they saw a strong, homogeneous, well-organized Coalition Party prepared, without loss of numbers or prestige, to take the place of the old Unionist Party, they would not object. What they do object to is what is rapidly coming to be the position—a Unionist Party broken into a number of weak and warring groups. But if we substitute for a sound party organization a collection of groups, we are certain to arrive at a con- dition of political log-rolling. But if we arrive at political log-rolling and Ministries based upon treaties made between seven or eight groups, we shall have been making the nation ripe for revolution. - That is the soil in which minority rule flourishes, and minority rule is revolutionary rule. Depend upon it, if we once develop the group system in our politics, we shall some day find that a skilful Parlia- mentary manipulator has produced a Socialist Labour Government, a Bottomley Government, a Winston Churchill Government, or conceivably a Mond-Montagu-Samuel- Bassoon Government, which does not rest upon the majority of the voters, but on a palpable minority. In order to enable such a Ministry to retain power, it may have to adopt a policy dangerous to the welfare of the State. The best way to avoid these dangers is to maintain in health and vigour the greatest anti-revolutionary asset which we possess ; that is, a strong homogeneous and well- organized Unionist Party—a party free, such as it has been hitherto, from any taint of corruption, and with a perfectly clear and well understood policy—absolutely democratic in its basis, though conservative in its policy, a party whose watchwords are " Democracy, Freedom, and the Constitution." Let there be no mistake. In advocating the reconstruction of the Unionist Party—the election at St. George's shows that it must come to that—we are not demanding the dropping of the pilot. Even if he is given to steer by instinct rather than by chart, we have no desire to ask for his dismissal. We are willing, indeed, to admit that we may have been too hard on Mr. Lloyd George in the past. While acknowledging his past services, all we want is that he shall be asked, needless to say with the full courtesies of politics, to sink all former differences and distinctions, and become in the fullest sense a Unionist as well as the head of a Unionist Government and Party. The same invitation• must of course be extended to all his Liberal followers, whether in office or among the rank and file. The majority of the Coalition Liberals are already thorough Unionists or Constitutionalists at heart. In no matter are their views distinguishable from those of the most exact of Unionists.
We would go further and say that we, and we believe practically all Unionists, would be perfectly willing to consent to a change of name if such were desired. When we said on a previous occasion that we wanted absorption we did not mean any slight to Coalition Liberalism. We only thought that as the Unionist Party is already a party based on an alliance—the alliance of the old Liberals, Harting- tonians, and Chamberlainites—under a name which means not only the Union with Ireland, but also the union of parties, it would be best to continue in that name. If, how- ever, such a description as " The Constitutional Party " or " The National Democratic Party " were thought better, we see no objection whatever to its adoption. All we desire, all we stand for, is a homogeneous party in which complete incorporation has taken place, and not a mere Coalition liable to be broken as quickly as it was formed. There are great dangers before the State--dangers which we are convinced can be overcome if the need for a well- tempered instrument with a sharp edge and not a bundle of sticks loosely tied together is realized. No matter how skilful is the combatant, he will do better with a steel blade than with the aforesaid faggot. Therefore it comes down to this. What we have got to demand is the reconstruction of a strong Unionist Party. If Mr. Lloyd George will help with that reconstruction, and will become one of us, well and good. At any rate, we who have been among his chief critics shall be prepared to render him all the support which can rightly and lawfully be asked for by any Minister from his political adherents. If, however, he rejects the idea of Unionist reconstruction under his leadership and involving his definite absorption in the Unionist Party, and insists on remaining the unfettered leader of a Coalition rather than of a party, we must regretfully face the fact and its consequences. The chief of these consequences must be not, let us hasten to say, any attempt to dislodge Mr. Lloyd George or to break up the Coalition, but instant preparation in order to enable the Unionist Party to survive and help the State when the crash comes—a crash inevitable if we go on as we are new going. It requires very little of the power of a prophet to see what will happen. Either there will be a sudden collapse of the Coalition majority in the House of Commons com- parable to what took place at St. George's, Hanover Square, or Mr. Lloyd George, feeling power slipping from him, will hurry us into a General Election at the first moment which he thinks suitable or least likely to be injurious—an occasion which almost necessarily must be before the full horrors of the next Budget are disclosed. An election fought under such conditions, however skilfully stage-managed, is almost certain to lead to a ministerial earthquake. Therefore the leaders of the Unionists must, if they are to do their duty by their party and their State, quietly lay their plans for an appeal which may be made to them— the appeal that the King's Government must be carried on. There are plenty of Unionists at present in office and out of office capable of making an excellent Ministry, and one in which the country would have the strongest confidence. There might, nay would, be difficulty in improvising such a Ministry at a sudden call. What we want to do is to prevent panic and consternation, and one of the best ways to do this is to accustom the country to the knowledge that it is not true to say that there is no alternative to the present Government. That has been said of almost every Government in power during the past two centuries, and yet every Government of which it has been said have been succeeded by a Government who the country soon began to declare were an improvement on their predecessors!
Previous page
