Part 14
This precipitate and lamentable decision lost at least forty Liberal seats, gave to the Conservatives their majority, and what is equally important established the Labour Party as His Majesty's official Opposition in the House of Commons. The latter is much the most serious practical result of the decisions of the Independent leaders to debar united action at the last election. If Liberals had united when the Coalition came to an end, Liberalism might have polled five million votes. It would have now held a powerful second position in parliament, and the country and the nation would have looked to it in the future as it has hitherto done in the past for the alternative to "Toryism." Instead of that it is a poor split third. How could they expect to win at the polls? The National Liberals were pursued into their constituencies. Thirty-five National Liberal seats were assailed by Independent Liberal candidates. I am not making a complaint, but offering an explanation. Whatever the views of the National Liberal leaders might have been on the subject of Liberal unity they were given no chance to effect it, and although they entered into no national compact with the Conservatives their followers in certain areas had no option but to negotiate local arrangements with the Conservatives for mutual support. The implacable attitude of the Independent Liberals left them no choice in the matter.
What was the inevitable result? No real fight was put up for Liberal principles on either side. The Independent Liberals were tangled by the personal preoccupation of their leaders. They had accumulated enormous dumps of ammunition for the day of battle on the assumption that the main attack would be on the Coalition Liberals, and, although the Conservatives now lined the opposite trenches, anger dominated strategy, and the guns were still fired at their old foes, whilst the Tory government was only bombarded with bouquets. On the other hand, the National Liberal leaders were embarrassed by the engagements into which their followers had been driven by the action of the Independent Liberal leaders and the two warring factions.
The National Liberals, in spite of their enormous difficulties, have not been exterminated. I am not going to enter into a barren inquiry as to whether their numbers are or are not greater than those of Mr. Asquith's followers. Let it be assumed that they are equal. The marvel is that under these fratricidal conditions so many Liberals of any complexion have been returned.
I am not setting forth these unhappy facts in order to prolong the controversy which has poisoned Liberalism for years, but in order to call attention to the vitality which, in spite of these depressing conditions, can bring up 4,100,000 voters to the polls. Electorally Liberalism is the balancing power, and if it casts its united strength against either reaction or subversion its influence must be decisive, whatever the composition of this parliament may be.
It is common knowledge that the Independent Liberals confidently anticipated the return of at least 120 members of their group. The fact that they only succeeded in securing the return of about fifty is naturally to them a source of deep disappointment.
If the failure of high hopes leads to contemplation of the real causes of that failure and a sincere desire is manifested to substitute co-operation for conflict my colleagues and I will welcome it. We cannot force our society on an unwilling company.
During the campaign I repeatedly expressed the hope that one outcome of this election would be to bring moderate men of progressive outlook in all parties to see the wisdom of acting together.
But progressive minds are by no means confined to the Liberal party. I have met and worked with them in the Conservative party, and the election will have taught many men and women in the Labour party that violent and extravagant proposals impede progress. If the limits are not too narrowly drawn, this parliament may witness the effective association of men of many parties who are genuinely concerned in the advancement of mankind along the paths of peace and progress for the attainment of their common ideals. If that end is achieved, the coming years will not be spent in vain.
One word as to the National Liberals. When the dissolution came no party was ever placed in a more embarrassing and even desperate situation.
The Conservatives have at their disposal a great political machine. The Labour party could command the support of all the trade unions, with their elaborate machinery for organising the wage-earning population. The Independent Liberals had in England and in Scotland captured the Liberal machine almost in its entirety, and had spent six years in perfecting it, their leaders having no other occupation.
The National Liberal leaders inherited no political machinery, and were too preoccupied with great world affairs to be able to devote any time to the improvisation of an effective new organisation.
Conservatives, Independent Liberals, and Labour all alike attacked National Liberal seats where they thought any advantage might be gained for their respective parties by doing so. The Conservatives only refrained from attack in cases where they thought there was more to be gained by arrangement. There was a great volume of popular sentiment behind our group. I visited Britain, north, south, east, west, and I have never witnessed such crowds nor such enthusiasm at any electoral contest in which I have ever taken part; but there was no organisation to convert acclamation into electoral power, and you could not build up a vast political machine in three weeks. Our supporters were not provided with an opportunity to test their strength in two-thirds of the constituencies. In nearly three hundred constituencies they could not do so without impairing the chances of Liberal candidates. A compact with Conservatives ruled them out of others.
It is a wonder that, in spite of these adverse and even paralysing conditions our numbers are twice those of the Independent Liberals in 1918.
We have now for the first time full opportunity for placing our case and point of view before the country and organising support for them. It is our duty to do so.
Every month will contribute its justification for the course we have hitherto pursued, and for the counsel we have steadfastly given to a country struggling through abnormal difficulties.
_London, November 20th, 1922._
XXIV
HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS
The startling English by-elections of the last few weeks have called attention to the working of the new electorate in Great Britain and set men pondering about its possibilities in a way a general election failed to make them think. Democracy in the sense of government of a great state by the absolute and unfettered authority of the majority of its own citizens of all ranks and conditions is a modern experiment. The United States of America are the oldest democracy in the world to-day.
How many realise that Britain became a democracy for the first time in 1917? Until then the majority of its adult population had no voice in the making or administration of the laws that ruled their lives.
The United States of America, France and Italy have adopted universal suffrage as the basis of authority for many a year. So have the British Dominions, but Britain herself, the pioneer of representative institutions, until recently shrank from the experiment of adult suffrage. Before the Reform Act of 1832 the total electorate of this country numbered only 3 per cent. of the population. The distribution of power amongst this small percentage was so arranged that even the 3 per cent. represented in effect no more than at best 1 per cent.
A generation of turmoil and agitation, almost culminating in revolution, succeeded in forcing through a measure which increased the 3 per cent. to 4.5 per cent. of the population! It is true that the distribution of votes was more equitable, but even with that improvement to call this ridiculous percentage a democracy would be absurd. Another generation of growing agitation ensued. This also ended in violence. Then Mr. Disraeli, one of the boldest and most venturesome of British statesmen, in 1867 doubled the electorate. His measure increased the number of voters to 9 per cent. of the population.
Disraeli's audacious plunge horrified some of his aristocratic supporters and shocked many Whigs. "Bob" Lowe had already foretold calamities that would follow Gladstone's more cautious proposals. Seven years later saw the election of the first Tory parliament since 1841. So much for the prophecies of the men who always fear evil must flow from justice.
Fifteen years after the Disraeli measure the Gladstone administration added another 7 per cent. to the electorate. The Gladstone proposals, which raised the number of voters to 16 per cent., were so vehemently contested that they nearly precipitated a Constitutional crisis of the first magnitude. Ultimately, however, they were carried, and there the franchise remained until the war.
The electorate that, through its representatives, accepted the German challenge in 1914, and was therefore responsible for involving the country in the most costly and sanguinary war it ever waged, represented one-sixth of the population and about one-third of the adults. The conscription act converted the country to the injustice of this state of things. Millions of men were forced to risk their lives for a policy which they had no share in fashioning. Millions of women faced anxieties and tortures worse than death in pursuit of the same policy, and yet no woman was allowed to express any opinion as to the selection of the rulers who led them to this sacrifice.
It was felt to be so unjust that in the exaltation of war, which lifted men to a higher plane of equity, this obvious wrong was redressed. Hence the greatest of all the enfranchisement acts, the Act of 1917, that for the first time converted the British system of government into a democracy.
How has it worked? It is too early to speak of its results. Mr. Austen Chamberlain in a letter[10] has called attention to one aspect of its operation. He emphasises a fact which is already known to every man who has passed through the experience of a contested election, that nearly one-half the new electorate is unattached to any political party.
If you deduct out of the total the numbers of the old electorate which had already formed ties of a party character, you will find from the result of the elections that more than half the new electorate is free and floating about without any anchor or rudder and ready to be towed by the first party that succeeded in roping them. Millions of the new electors are too indifferent or too undecided about political issues to take sides at the polling booths.
In the hotly contested election of January, 1910, 92 per cent. of the voters went to the poll. At the second election which took place in the same year the percentage was 89. The slight difference between the two elections would be accounted for by the fact that in the second election the register was old. Compare these results with the two elections which have occurred since the 1917 enfranchisement. At the 1918 election 64 per cent. only of the voters could be induced to make the acquaintance of the ballot-boxes. This might be explained by the inevitable political apathy which follows a great war. The pulse of party beat feebly and irregularly. The old party organisations had, through five years of neglect, fallen into complete disrepair--the new party had not yet had time to perfect its machinery. Hence the failure of competitive effort to induce at least 6,000,000 of the new voters to take a sufficient interest in their new privileges to exercise them at the election.
The next four years were a period of growing political activity. The new party was especially energetic. Their chief organiser, Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., is one of the most gifted party managers of this generation, and his achievement is an outstanding feature of political organisation in this country. The old parties also had time to repair their machinery; by the time the election was called their organisations were in full working order. The only party which had no organisation worth speaking of was the National Liberal party. The others were ready for the struggle.
Nevertheless, when the election came in November nearly 5,000,000 of the electors were not sufficiently interested in the contest to take the trouble to record their votes. It showed an improvement of 10 per cent. on the previous election, but there still remained nearly 20 per cent.--making allowance for death, sickness, removals, etc.--who stayed at home, and could not be persuaded by personal or public appeal or pressure exercised by three or four great organisations, to walk a few hundred yards out of their way in order to place a simple cross on the ballot paper that was awaiting them.
The municipal elections tell a still more dismal story of apathy. But that is an old story. It was with difficulty that the old electorate, with all its long training, could be cajoled to visit the polling booths where the good government of the towns in which they breathed, lived, toiled, enjoyed themselves, and rested was being determined. At their worst, however, they made a better show than the newly enfranchised voters.
How does the record compare with democracy in other lands? France is no better. On the whole, I understand it is worse. The voting in the United States of America fluctuates according to the interest excited by the particular election. In this respect America does not differ from Britain. I cannot lay my hand on the percentage of the poll at the last presidential election, but I gather it was higher than ours at the general election. The Germans polled at their last election 89 per cent. of their electorate; in Italy the percentage was much lower.
With an unpolled and unticketed electorate of over 4,000,000 anything may happen. They have clearly no interest in the ordinary political conflicts that engage the minds of their fellow-citizens; otherwise, the excitement of two general elections would have roused them to such faint exhibition of partisanship as is implied in the choosing of a candidate out of the two or three who have taken the trouble to send along their pictures.
But one day an issue may arise which will wake up the most lethargic. What will it be? And what view will they take of it when it comes? And who will succeed in catching the eye of the slumbering multitude when it opens? Much depends on the answer to these questions. They may rally to the defence of property menaced by rapacious creeds. They may rush to the protection of their homes threatened by avaricious wealth.
Even those who have already voted are liable to sudden and devastating changes of opinion. Witness Mitcham, Willesden, and Edgehill. These three seats were regarded as being amongst the safest in England, and were selected for that very reason.
Amongst many disquieting factors there is one which ought to be dealt with ere another election arrive. Under the present system a minority of electors may usurp absolute dominion over the fortunes of this kingdom for fully five years.
This is one of the freaks of the group system. The present parliamentary majority has been elected by an aggregate vote which represents something a little better than one-fourth of the total electorate and one-third of those who recorded their votes. If Mitcham and Edgehill are a foretaste of what is to happen at the "General," Labour will be the lucky third. A similar turnover of votes in every constituency would place them easily in that position.
America has brought its vast electorate under what seems to us to be a perfect discipline. But in the process it has passed through much tribulation, including the furnace of a terrible civil war. Italy has been impelled to correct the working of democratic institutions by a display of force. Britain may mobilise and drill its electoral forces with less trouble. But it has a Socialist party, which has grown by millions within less than a decade--and is still growing. This week its most eloquent member has proposed, in the House of Commons, a solemn motion for the abolition of private property. Deputies chosen by four and a quarter million of British electors will vote for this proposal, and if, four years hence, they add another million and a half to their poll, they will be in a position to place that motion on the statute book. Their increase between 1918 and 1922 was greater than that.
FOOTNOTE:
[10] See the _Times_, March 14, 1923.
XXV
POLITICAL REALITIES
A few weeks ago I predicted that the comparative calm which has prevailed in the political seas of Britain during the past few years was coming to an end. Recent parliamentary scenes leave no doubt that the prolonged political depression is to be followed by a period of storms--it may be hurricanes.
No amount of organisation or propaganda can excite real feeling in an electorate over trivial and unreal issues. Why did the coalition of 1915 fall? And why did the Liberal party split in 1916? Who was responsible? Should the general election have taken place in 1918 or 1919? Ought open and declared opponents of the government of the day to have then received government support or at least government neutrality? These are questions which agitate a few who are personally interested, but they leave the nation cold.
The war was real enough. But the war was supported by men of all parties, and, therefore, provoked no political controversy. The minority which opposed it was negligible, and challenged no parliamentary discussion on the question. The treaty of peace was, on the whole, accepted by all parties when it was first submitted to Parliament. The leaders of the opposition parties in the Lords and Commons at the time of its presentation offered no serious criticism of its provisions.
The legislation proposed by the Coalition, although in ordinary seasons much of it would have aroused angry passions, coming as it did after the war had exhausted emotion, passed with no more than a feeble murmur of protest. Take, for instance, such controversial topics as adult suffrage, the enfranchisement of women, the wholesale reductions in hours of labour, representative government in India, and notably the conferring upon Ireland of a measure of Home Rule more complete than any proposed by Gladstone.
Any one of these measures proposed before the war would have led to heated discussion throughout the land. The case of Ireland is perhaps the most significant of the changed temper of the nation immediately after the great war. The conflict over Irish Home Rule has now culminated in a treaty accepted by the nation as a whole and acquiesced in by the most violent amongst its opponents.
But fiercer political passions were stirred up by the struggle between parties over Ireland than by any political question of modern times. The causes underlying the conflict dealt with two of the most powerful motives which make the human heart throb--race and religion. There was the old feud between Saxon and Gael extending over at least seven centuries. It drenched the moors of Ireland with the blood of both races before a keener edge was given to its hatreds by the introduction of an acute religious quarrel.
After the Reformation the religious differences which rent Europe with fratricidal wars added fresh fury to the racial enmities which made poor Ireland a cauldron of perpetual strife. When Mr. Gladstone proposed to settle this raging tumult by wresting supremacy from a race which had been dominant in that island for 700 years and a faith which had been supreme there for 400 years and transferring it to the race and religion which all that time had been in a condition of servitude, and when in order to attain his ends he had to secure the adhesion of men of the ruling blood and creed to his proposals, the passions raised were deeper and angrier than any witnessed in British politics for many a day. It led for the first time in the history of parliament to scenes of physical violence on the floor of the House. It shows what we may expect when there are genuine divisions of opinion which profoundly move masses of men and women in a democracy. Those who recall the tropical heat of parliamentary debates in 1893 naturally regard their voyage through the frigid proceedings of the last parliament as they would a sail through Arctic seas. That voyage is now over, and there are signs that the waters will soon be lashed into fury.
For years political controversy between parties has been suspended in the presence of a common danger. Reaction was inevitable, and the greater the suppression the more violent the rebound. That does not, however, altogether account for the visible omens of a coming struggle unprecedented in its gravity. Fundamental issues have been raised of such moment to millions that they cannot be settled without a struggle that will rock society.
The scene enacted in the Commons a few days ago was by no means as exciting as that which some of us witnessed in 1893. But it gave me an uneasy feeling that the period of calm is definitely over, and that Parliament henceforth must expect gusts and gales--and worse. Emotions are once more welling up, and there are signs of a great stir coming in British politics.
The cause is easily explained. The sense of exhaustion is passing away, and issues containing a serious challenge to the privileges and rights of powerful classes in the community and vital to the interests of all classes have been raised by one of the great political parties that divide Britain. The momentous character of that challenge may be gathered from the terms of the motion submitted by Mr. Philip Snowden to the judgment of the House of Commons:--
"That in view of the failure of the capitalist system to adequately utilise and organise natural resources and productive power, or to provide the necessary standard of life for vast numbers of the population, and believing that the cause of this failure lies in the private ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, this House declares that legislative effort should be directed to the gradual supersession of the capitalist system by an industrial and social order based on the public ownership and democratic control of the instruments of production and distribution."