MR. ASQUITH AT PAISLEY.
THE by-election at Paisley promises to be one of the most important in recent times. It may be a turning-point for the Coalition. There are rumours that Mr. Lloyd George is contemplating the issue of a new political programme with the intention of holding the Coalition together, but at present he does not seem to be doing much more than standing in front of the political barometer, tapping it, and wondering what the weather is going to be. The indicating hand on the barometer ffies up and down with the rapidity which always marks unsettled conditions ; Mr. Lloyd George has his eye now on Mr. Asquith desperately trying to enlarge the rump of the Liberal Party, now on the Labour Party, and yet again on insurgent Unionists. He speculates how many Unionists agree with the Lord Chancellor that the great political Coalition which was thought to be a brontosaurus is really an invertebrate. We guess that we shall have to wait a good long time for the development of Lord Birkenhead's National Party. We have heard of Centre Parties before, and though there is a great deal to be said for them, they somehow find it very difficult to make their appearance. Lord Birkenhead has without apology appropriated the name of the earnest little political party which is presided over by Lord Ampthill and General Page Croft, explaining that appropriation in such a case does not very much i matter, as the party has only two representatives n the House of Commons. The total man-power of Lord Birken- head's National Party, however, seems to consist so far of Lord Birkenhead himself. The rights of appropriation on these lines are so obscure that they must involve some legal principle which has been hidden from previous Lord Chancellors.
Meanwhile Mr. Asquith has made a statement at Paisley which is really of the first importance. He has definitely opposed himself to the Labour Party. The advanced Liberal papers have been talking for a long time about the natural and long-established association between the aims of Labour and the aims of Liberalism. If Mr. Asquith had cared to act in the sense of all this nebulous and rather rhetorical writing, he would either have sanctioned a junction between Liberalism and Labour for the purpose of finding a common representative at Paisley—which would, have meant that he would not have stood himself— or he would have himself put on the mantle of rhetoric and nebulosity and spoken at Paisley in such a way as to win for himself a good many of the votes which hover on the border-line of the Labour Party. He has chosen quite another course. His statement is so interesting that we must quote his exact words. There is no doubt about his meaning, not only because of the clearness and firmness of the language, but because he chose as the occasion of this statement his first appearance in the constituency :— " On the other side, you have a representative of what is called Labour. I do not forget—although it is a fact which is con- veniently put in the background by many candidates and the so-called representatives of Labour at by-elections--I do not forget that the ultimate aim of the Labour Party, and of those who would inspire and direct its policy, is the acquisition and operation by the State of the whole machinery of the production of the country. That is a form of industrial tyranny against which, if you can conceive of it ever being brought into practical effect, it is in my opinion the first duty of Liberalism to protest."
The first thing which occurred to us on reading these words was that it was the most definite statement which has been made since the war by any political leader about the relation of other parties to Labour. One might think that there is not a word of this statement with which every professed Unionist would not agree, and that it hardly requires to be said that it ,represents the Unionist position as regards Socialism. But, as a matter of fact, have such things been stated in explicit words by any Unionist leader since the formation of the present Coalition ? If such words have been used, they have not been emphasized, and they have certainly escaped our attention. What we do remember is that the leaders of the Coalition— Liberals of course as well as Unionists—whether expressly or tacitly, have acted in such a way that nobody has known exactly what their attitude to Labour was. Sometimes they seem to sanction nationalization, sometimes they seem to be against it, but all the time the ordinary observer has the impression that nothing will be definitely ruled out if the Labour Party can make enough fuss, or are able to show their strength by winning a by-election or two at favourable Moments or in some other way. It is to be feared that if the Unionist leaders do not think out the course which they mean to steer, they will find themselves left in an equivocal position. But no political party can prosper if its meaning is equivocal. It may prosper with a good policy or it may prosper, alas ! with a bad. policy ; but whatever its policy is, it must be perfectly plain to the ordinary man.
It is the merit of Mr. Asquith that on one point at all events he has left us in no doubt. He has read the signs of to-day rightly. People do not want State ownership ; they do not want State interference ; they do not want the trammels and impertinences of a bureaucracy. However wrong. Mr. Asquith may be about other things, he is quite safe in Wang this particular line. The Labour extremists, in whose presence so many politicians display a palsied alarm, are an insignificant minority. The total achieve- ment of the Labour Party at the last General Election was that it won sixty seats out of seven hundred, and among those sixty representatives there are of course some who cannot by any manner of means be called extremists. We could wish that Mr. Asquith had spoken as con- vincingly on other points as he did on the point we have mentioned. But this is a vain regret, for if it did not exist we should find ourselves belonging to Mr. Asquith's party— and that most certainly we do not. There was something almost laughable in his claim that the pursuit of freedom is one of the fundamental principles of Liberalism. When he says that Liberals have kept in view "the interest not of this or that particular political class but of the com- munity as a whole," we cannot help reflecting grimly.. on that abominable example of class legislation, the Trade Disputes Act. Again, when he talks of giving self-deter- mination to Ireland, as though it would be just as easy as giving self-determination to Czecho-Slovakia or to the Yugo-Slays or the Caucasians or the Poles, we cannot help reflecting on his suppression of the all-important fact that the Irish majority could have self-determination to-morrow If only they did not deny its application to that large part of Ulster which demands it with an earnestness equal to their own.
On the whole we hope that Mr. Asquith will win his election, for the simple reason that he is one of the most distinguished and experienced Parliamentarians in the country, and that his influence is much required in the House. It is required to remind too subservient Members of their Parliamentary dignity and their independence. The Coalition Government would be all the better if kept up to the mark by really able and coherent opposition. The present situation is very much like that when the Liberals had won their great victory in 1906. At that election Mr. Balfour was beaten at Manchester. The new Liberal Government had things far too much their own way in the House, and the corrective did not appear till Mr. Balfour was returned for the City of London and once more took up his part in the House of Commons. The change for the better was instantaneous and most noticeable. That is precisely the kind of function that we should like to see Mr. Asquith performing in the next Session. There is no possible comparison between his political method and manner and those of his Unionist opponent at Paisley. Mr. MacKean could not render the services in the House of Commons which would be easy to Mr. Asquith. It is impossible to imagine that the Prime Minister will be able to treat the House of Commons in so offhand a manner when the affairs of Parliament are subject to the cool, penetrating, and analytical scrutiny of Mr. Asquith. It is for this purpose, and this purpose alone, that we want to see Mr. Asquith back in the House of Commons. We hold that this is one of those special occasions on which independent judgment should rise above any ordinary party allegiance. If it were a question of supporting Mr. Asquith's whole policy, or supporting him as the possible bead of a new Government, we should have to write differ- ently altogether. Mr. Asquith's Irish record alone would prevent us from supporting him as Prime Minister. But we are not the leas clear in our mind that it would be a real advantage to have him restored as a leader and organizer of the Opposition.
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