His Majesty's Opposition
THERE is always room for an Opposition in Parlia- ment under our Constitution. Even a National Government formed to carry the country through an emergency will do its work the better if it has critics at its elbow or a gadfly on its flank. None is the worse for the stimulus or restraint of dissenting opinion, and with- out an Opposition a Government may easily lose touch with opinion in the country that deserves attention. Whether there be two parties in Parliament as of old, or three, is a minor matter so long as the Government knows that it has watchful opponents and so long as an Opposition honestly fulfils its function and thereby gives valuable service to the Crown in Parliament and so to the State at large.
To-day when the State is in dire need of every man's honest efforts to help we are not satisfied with the pro- spects offered by the Members of Parliament who appear likely to form and guide the Opposition to the Govern- ment. For it appears to us at present that they are not of a true brand of Parliamentary Opposition. This is not altogether a new trouble, for it is akin to the trouble that Burke had when he refused to be the delegate of the electors of Bristol. But in these days when politics are organized on a comprehensive scale, it becomes far more serious, and the danger to our fundamental principles of Parliamentary Government are greater. We wrote last week of Mr. MacDonald's courage in rightly refusing to be dictated to by a body outside Parliament. Appa- rently the Opposition is to be a party composed in effect of delegates, and not even the delegates of their con- stituencies. If ever such an Opposition should obtain office, they would be subject to orders from outside as an Australian Labour Government is subject to a Caucus. It is wholly contrary to the ideal that the whole House of Commons should represent the whole country. If many of the Labour Party who are going into opposition are unable to see whither they are going, let them plead their ignorance. But there are leaders among them who cannot put forward that plea and they bear a very heavy responsibility.
We know no Cabinet secrets, but it seems to be certain that when the Cabinet received the alarming news that our foreign credits would not be renewed unless the security was immediately confirmed by better prospects of our paying our way or making far more serious efforts to do so, there was a general recognition that a crisis was imminent, and there was no pretence that the Cabinet had not the responsibility of meeting it in behalf of the country. When it came to devising measures to meet it by reducing expenditure and raising revenue, there was naturally room for difference of opinion, but we understand that many more Ministers than the few who support the Prime Minister to-day accepted, roughly at any rate, the proposals that appeared to him absolutely necessary. These may have been hard for them to swallow. So too they were for Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Snowden : for whom could they be harder ? The difficulties were great, but to those who knew the bitter truth they were inescapable except by flight. At first we may suppose that they kept each other's courage up to carry the responsibility. Then came, in our opinion, a mistaken act, natural enough for obvious reasons, but savouring too much of truckling to a body outside Parlia- ment. This was the communication of the proposed measures to the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, which instead of trying to help would have- none of them ; and instead of bowing to the properly constituted authority for the initiation of Parliamentary legislation, answered with an audacious threat of uncom- promising resistance. Then came the test of these Ministers, and they failed.
Mr. Henderson falls into the place of the leader of the Opposition and must take the chief criticism, though there are others to whom it is applicable with only slightly less weight. Our regret at the course he has taken is magni- fied as we think of the past services of this organizer of Trade Union politics as a Minister of the Crown. During the War, in which he received a grievous blow, he never failed his country, but worked for the united front which painfully wore down the enemy. He went to Russia after the abdication of the Czar, and saw the sufferings of a bankrupt people. As Foreign Minister he had to consider the prospects of Germany if her financial system were allowed to collapse ; and admirable work he has done to prevent this catastrophe to our former enemy, to Europe and the world. He knew, as did the others, the true position of this country last month. He knew the imminent danger of a " flight from the pound," of the gradual depreciation, inevitably to become a rapid depreciation, of our money. He, if anyone in the Cabinet, had the knowledge of what might be the future of us all, first and foremost of the poorest in the country, when our money would not buy bread. If they all dreaded a reduction of the Unemployment Insurance " dole," they knew that a shilling would be better worth having while sterling was preserved at any cost than many pounds would be if our money began the inevitable descent under the inexorable pressure that only a few years ago annihi- lated the old German mark. What would the wretched Englishmen do with a " dole " of £5 a week if it would not pay a tram fare, as 100 German marks, and then 1,000 marks, failed to do ? Again, if they would raise new money from " the rich," these Cabinet Ministers knew Mr. Snowden's views. His last Budget speech was an admis- sion that the zenith of direct taxation had been reached ; that heavier taxes would produce less money. Mr. Snowden admitted it, though he has also admitted that he has desired to use taxation to redistribute wealth. These Ministers know that if by direct taxation—call it preda- tory or not—you take property from the rich beyond a limit, you may indeed make them poor, but you find that you have nothing of value by which to make the poor rich. You have only destroyed wealth by destroying security. If you take away the income or the market value of property, the "riches" melt in your hand, and there is nothing to give away.
These Ministers, then, ran away from the responsibility that was theirs to bear, and left it to others to incur the odium. Instead of enlightening trades unionists and others from their greater resources of knowledge, they abandoned at the behest of the Congress the measures which in the Cabinet they accepted as necessary. For the expert financial opinion which they asked for and accepted then they now adopt the term ignorantly given outside, " a bankers' ramp." If these Ministers had only run away from a burden too great for them, we could pity their fate as hard indeed. But if they cling to leadership and descend to mislead forces, that are not Parliamentary forces, against their own stouter colleagues who would restore the country, they must not look for sympathy, and they cannot hope to be regarded as the honest, helpful critics of the Government whom we have the right to look for, ranged across the floor of the House of Commons, doing their best to serve the country in Opposition.
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