THE MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS.
LABOUR— that is to say, Labour as represented by extreme men—has signally failed to win the great results which it expected at the Municipal Elections. To the moderate man who wishes Labour well in all its justifiable demands, but who clings to and loves the temperate traditions and the Constitutional methods of his country, the prospect has become as full of hope as the results of the elections are unequivocal in their teaching. The extremists who too long have led the mass of manual workers by the nose worked for the recent elections as they had never worked before. They had been quite naturally and justifiably elated by the great successes they had scored at the London Municipal Elections in November, 1919. They were determined to repeat those successes on a wider scale. They worked like moles: To quote the Daily Herald on the eve of the elections : "North, South, East, or West, there are very few seats that Labour is leaving unchallenged." The Daily Herald then went on to speak of "the magnitude of the fight in relation to the efforts of the Capitalist party." The extremists, in fact, looked upon the elections as a grand encounter in Class Warfare. The principles of Karl Marx —that sinister yet brilliant German who haa been allowed bythe intelligentsia of Labour entirely to oust our old British economists—were to be disseminated universally. But the extremists failed because the country was against them.
Although Labour has failed no other party has gained a notable victory. But by comparison with the fact that the extremists have excited popular disfavour and have received a bad check nothing else is of great importance. It would be an interesting study to explain in detail how this failure for the extremists has come about. For our part we find the principal cause in the much firmer and more coherent lino which the Government have lately been taking in industrial affairs. The ordinary Englishman likes a Government who know their own mind as much as lie likes an individual who knows his. He dislikes and mistrusts a Government who say with much emphasis that they are going to do this, that, or the other and then do not do it. He feels that his interests and his future are not safe in the keeping of such people. In brief, he likes to be governed. We think that people would prefer a Prime Minister who was always perfectly intelligible and consistent, even though they often disapproved of his policy, to one whose policy, so far as it could be ascertained, pleased them more, but who was continually leaving them in a fog of doubt. They would always feel that they could get rid of the unfaltering Prime Minister if he seriously annoyed them, but what they cannot abide is that they should be, as the soldier says, "messed about." They want to know exactly where they are. Recently the Government have distinctly pleased the majority of Englishmen by asserting a principle in face of the miners and sticking to that principle while, of course, showing themselves reasonably and properly adaptable on points of detail.
All this making of opinion in the municipal electorates which has ended in a disappointment for Labour has been going on invisibly. We are truly an amazing nation. Just when the voice of revolution never seemed to be so loud in the land the inarticulate masses "got busy" and marched silently and invisibly towards a sound general conclusion. We should exaggerate if we said that this conclusion was reached by steady thinking. Lord Haldane may tell the country that its first duty is to think clearly, but the surprising thing about British popular methods has always been that the conclusions are reached, apparently, without thinking. It is rather an affair of instinct—an inherited tendency to anticipate and prevent tyranny by putting obstacles in the way of any man or party or idea which looks like becoming too powerful. It is particularly noticeable that Labour has lost votes in several Northern towns—not, however, in Glasgow— where extreme ideas have been most loudly preached. The general lesson is the very old one that, though the working man in the mass never gives a lead, he fully recognizes a lead when it is given and is glad to follow it. Having once recognized instinctively that the right thing is being done, he willingly follows leadership which he takes to be cautious while firm and confident, and there- after he never looks back, at least so long as the particular situation which he has been considering lasts. It is most encouraging to have yet another proof that, while the Englishman is true to type, this process will always be going on. it is said that there is much apathy at municipal elections, and that is undoubtedly true. It has even been calculated that only one elector in five troubles to vote. Probably at the latest elections there was less apathy; but however that may be, the fact that there was the old tendency to " trim," in the best sense of that word, is evident.
Of course the great rise in the rates which are such a heavy burden on the shoulders of every householder and every housewife had a considerable influence on the elec- tions. But in this matter let us try to be quite fair. A large part of the rise is to be attributed not only to Labour councillors, wherever they had the power to dictate municipal policy, but to the universal increase in the cost of materials of food and of wages. The increase in the cost of these things would have caused the rates to rise steeply in any ease. What we can say fairly and without fear of contradiction, however, is that the various Labour parties have been much more careless than any other parties about the advance of public expenditure. They have advocated fresh outlays right and left. They have even pointed to lavish expenditure as a proof that they were doing good work and "helping the people." Now Nemesis has overtaken them, because, though the poorer classes are largely pre. eluded from recognizing how heavily the rates bear upon them owing to the unfortunate manner in which rates are disguised in a comprehensive rent-oharge, these classes have nevertheless had quite enough sense to be aware of what was going on. The Labour extremists have made all kinds of handsome promises of what would be done for the people wherever Labour ruled. Jack Cade excelled himself. But the benefits have been much less apparent than the financial burden, and the electors have just shown that they have a due sense of that fact. They have not got the benefits, but the rates are there to be paid.
Last in our list of causes mention must be made of the protracted threats of the miners to the whole community. The reciprocal bearing of the coal crisis and the result of the municipal elections is so obvious that it cannot be over- looked. The truth is that the whole policy of trying to improve industrial conditions by threats is at last being recognized as an anti-popular, a non-democratic, policy. In hitting the Government, or the hated Capitalist, the striker hits the whole community. Yet the community has the right to exist, and the elections show that it means to assert that right. The couununity seems to be saying : "After all, we want the right thing to be done. The majority representing all classes are much more likely than any single class to agree upon what is right, even though particular classes may have been put upon in the past. A single class which usurps the right to rule is only a tyranny by whatever name it may call itself. Even if we approve of those who think that all wisdom and all humanity are centred in a single class to-day, what will their successors of to-morrow be like ? We have as good a title as anybody else to form an opinion about what is right. Moreover, we have our own interests to consider, and it is clear that in spite of much fine talk we have been hit very hard by these continual threats of strikes and all this unrest. 'Fear God and take your own part '—that is the motto for us."
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