ELECTION NOTES
HE Liberals would seem to have reason to be satisfied with their Assembly in London last week-end. Reso- lutions were carried with acclamation (except one about guaranteed markets and prices for .farmers) and money flowed in generously for the fighting fund. That has been a remarkable characteristic of Liberal meetings every- where in the last year—and Liberals are not a conspicuously wealthy section of the community. Since the Assembly Mr. Frank Byers, to whom Liberals owe a vast amount for his activity both inside and outside the House, has given a Liberal political broad- cast—not one of the two General Election broadcasts ; they will be by Lord Samuel and Lady Megan Lloyd-George. The Liberals' line is clearly to attack both the other parties indifferently and claim support as the ten/us gaudens. As to Mr. Byers' chief point —that the Liberals vere running enough candidates to enable them to form a Government, and that they possessed adequate personnel to form a Government, electors must form their own conclusions. As a, matter of mathematics, a majority of the new House would be 313, and the Liberals are running over 400 candi- dates. As to personnel, the only Liberal ex-Ministers available appear to be Lord Samuel, in the House of Lords, and Sir Archibald Sinclair and Mr. Dingle Foot, who have yet to secure their return to the House of Commons. In asking, by the way, who had heard of Mr. Chuter Ede before 1945 Mr. Byers seemed to have forgotten that Mr. Ede filled the post of Parlia- mentary Secretary to the Board of Education with considerable ability and success from 1940 to 1945.
* * * * Last week-end's two political broadcasts, by Lord Salisbury and Mr. Maurice Webb, were in striking contrast. The former was the more thoughtful and realistic, the latter more astute, and from the point of view of radio technique highly competent. The Conserva- tive speaker underlined the gravity of the country's financial and economic position, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has so con-
stantly done. Mr. Webb painted an astonishingly optimistic picture•of the situation. As for his remark that he had discussed Mr.
Churchill's broadcast with many Conservatives, and with few ex- ceptions found them gloomy, downcast and dispirited, it can only be said that other people who had talked with Conservatives received a very different impression. It was noteworthy that Mr. Webb did not mention the Tory manifesto which had been issued three days before ; it, in fact, supplied the answer in advance to most of his characterisations of Conservative policy.
* * _ * * The appeal of the Trades Union Congress for support for the Labour Party may have some moral value but it will do little to influence votes, for the good reason that the vast majority of trade union votes would go Labour in any case. Both the Conservative and Liberal parties claim to include a certain number of trade unionists, and it is hard to see how the Conservatives in particular could have got nearly ten million votes in 1945 without appreciable support from manual workers. Still, trade unionists are over- whelmingly Labour, and Labour they are likely to remain., At one point—where it refers to mass unemployment between the wars—the T.U.C. statement calls for comment. The high-water mark of unemployment was in 1930, when the total was 1,915,000, in 1931, when it was 2,650,000, and in 1932, when it was 2,745,000. A Labour Government was in office from 1929 to 1931, and its effects lived for a certain time after it. From 1933 the number of unemployed went sharply down.
* * * * At the Election Service at St. Paul's on Thursday, to be attended by the Prime Minister and other political leaders, the lesson was the passage in St. Luke beginning: "Can the blind lead the blind ? Shall not they both fall into the. ditch ? " It will be known by this time whether Mr. Attlee walked out "The British nation, now has to make one of the most momentous choices in its history. That choice is between two ways of life— between individual liberty and State domination ; between con- centration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of a property-owning democracy ; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity ; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of finding opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard."
So Mr. Churchill in his adoption speech at Woodford last Satur- day. It is no unfair statement of the rival policies. A second Labour Government would undoubtedly extend the field of State action, and so increase the power of the State over the citizen enormously ; that is not a matter of debate ; it is part of Labour's declared and published policy. That being so, it is a pity that Mr. Churchill talks about "plots." No doubt there are Labour Ministers who are aiming at a second instalment of State monopoly to pave the way for a third instalment of State monopoly. They may conceivably be plotting. But Mr. Attlee plotting ? Mr. Chuter Ede plotting ? Mr. Morrison (so anxious to limit the Government's commitments) plotting ? Not, really, a term to be cultivated.
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The Archbishop of York's direction to his clergy to keep politics out of the pulpit is clearly to be applauded—for several reasons. One is that people go to church to worship God and hear the Gospel preached—not for injunctions as to how to vote. Another is that the clergy as a rule are not well versed in the details of party politics ; it is no part of their business to be. Another is that individuals in the congregation cannot make rejoinders or ask questions. Another, and much the most important, is that the object of all worship and religious teaching is Christian unity. Politics, particularly when a General Election campaign is in progress, inevit- ably divide—though happily not disastrously. Such divisions must be left outside the church door. No bishop, it may be assumed, would object to the clergy impressing on their congregations the duty of voting, and the responsibility the exercise of that function entails, but even to hint at the desirability of voting one way or the other would be going outside the clergy's province. That, it is to be supposed, is what Dr. Garbett means, and he is surely right.
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It is quite clear that one of the chief Labour slogans is to be: "A vote for the Tories is a vote for dearer food." Mr. Harold Wilson, the President of the Board of Trade, used precisely-those words at Northwich on Tuesday. They are not a lie ; they are a flagrant—and if used by intelligent men a deliberate—half- truth. The Conservatives have said that food subsidies, which to a quite appreciable extent are going to people quite able to pay the economic price for their food, must somehow be reduced from their present level of £465,000,000' a year, but that, to prevent any reduction of subsidy from causing hardship, family allowances and pensions will be increased and some relief possibly given in addi- tion in the matter of taxation. In the face of that declaration, which can be found in black and white in the Conservative manifesto, This is the Road, to state without qualification that "a vote for the Tories is a vote for dearer food" is—whatever honest men may choose to call it.
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The straw-polls continue, and probably attract less serious attention each week. Two London papers, the Daily Express and the News Chronicle, are conducting them—quite independently of one another. ' In some respects the results tally ; in one notable respect they differ. Both polls showed last Monday that the Labour vote, as tested by the investigators, was increasing, the Conservative vote stationary or very slightly falling off and (rather surprisingly) the Liberal vote decreasing. But while the Express poll still gave the Conservatives a 471 vote as against 42+ for Labour, the News Chronicle put Labour a hair's breadth ahead. All this, it must be emphasised, is interesting rather than important
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