LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
A CHALLENGE. TO LIBERALS
Slit,—While I am by every political instinct a Liberal, as were my fore- fathers, I cannot help deeply deploring what seems to me the failure of this once great party to rise to the challenge of changed times and grave national crisis. I write entirely as a private individual, and my apology for entering upon a subject already publicly discussed from different angles is its urgency and relevance at the present moment, when the nation, hard-pressed and weary, is being called upon to endure still greater burdens and privations There sometimes comes in the life of an individual or a group the high call to sacrifice that life in order to save it. Does the Liberal Party cling to its separate existence (I speak, of course, chiefly of the " Inde- pendent " Liberal Party and exclude as the degree of the case warrants all those who do not so cling) because of a species of post-war spiritual fatigue which dulls its clear vision, or is if possibly the possession of generous party funds, inherited from the past, which hardens the soul?
Whatever ails this once great party, toiling today a trifle unctuously amidst the ambitious programme of its self-centred exertions, the first need of the country, politically speaking, is sticking out Everest-high for all to see but those who will not look. That need is to strengthen the anti- Socialist vote.
Why then do the Liberal leaders not make common cause with the Conservative leaders? One could quite understand the Liberal attitude of uncompromising independence if the return of a Conservative Govern- ment were regarded as a more calamitous possibility than a prolongation of Socialist rule. But who, except party officials and a sprinkling of keen doctrinaire voters, really knows the difference in broad principle and spirit between the good Conservative arid the good Liberal of 1947? Sundering gulfs of history and tradition divided the two parties in the past ; there are today some definite differences of policy, plan and prejudice. But has not the day and the hour brought these differences to a point where they should no longer be the excuse for the continuance of a separate party existence, but instead should serve to enlarge and enrich the counsels of a new united party organisation of Liberals and Conservatives together?
Liberals, of course, wave aside such suggestions lightly—or loftily— with the explanation, admirable in its apparent simplicity and sincerity, that their party offers to the perplexed voter a solid and sober course betwixt the extremes of Lef: and Right. This claim sounds very well on the platform when the speaker is seeking to jutsify the continued independent survival of the party. But it pays no heed at all to the depressing facts of the concrete, practical situation. For the claim assumes a habit of political thought and :onscience on the part of electors whose support it hopes to win, which is utterly non-existent. There is today, up and down the country, a large body of unenquiring electors who have not the slightest interest in the rival merits of the respective Liberal and Conservative prescriptions for national recovery. Politics for them resolves itself into the single question: Socialism—" For? " or " Against? " Their psychology is incapable of supporting any consideration of franchise alternatives beyond this, and not one step further will they budge along the highroad of political enlightenment unless, while we funk and fumble, they begin to construe the choice as that between Socialism and Corn- munisrri—a real and growing danger which we would be unwise not to take seriously.
There can be no doubt that the discrete existence of two such influential parties, each canvassing support on grounds that they claim are distinct yet which to a mass of the people are indistinguishable or are at least in practice by many simply not distinguished, weakens and delays the transfer of support from Socialism, and would at a General Election hinder the transfer of votes. But unite the Conservative and Liberal Parties ; let their combined strength be deployed to assail the Socialist position in the constituencies—nothing more to be feared now from the mischief of the split vote—and to expose and condemn Socialist mis- management with one single and insistent voice ; let the united talent, wisdom, experience, and idealism of the two parties be devoted to the formulation of remedies ; and withal let the new party find for itself a new and appropriate name, in keeping not so much with party tradition as with popular taste. Let these things happen, and, without question, many in whose minds there is more than a growing doubt of Socialist infallibility would decide at once to give the new " Union " Party a trial at the next opportunity, and in general there would emerge for the country a new hope and promise in the light of whose unexpected dawning our national affairs might, sooner than we think, take a turn for the better— particularly if the chief leadership were in th.1 hands of Mr. Churchill.
Who else?—Yours faithfully, IAN Susu'SON. 87 Savile Park Road. Halifax, Yorks
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