GREAT BRITAIN: Liberal Future

GREAT BRITIAN

Maybe the phrases in London’s overcrowded, smoke-fogged Caxton Hall failed to echo the thunder of Palmerston, the precision of Gladstone or the delicacy of Asquith. But the 800 delegates to the Liberal Party’s annual conference last week, and the public which got it secondhand, agreed that the meanings did no dishonor to British Liberalism’s revered granddaddies.

In the 82 years between the Liberal Party’s birth and World War I, Liberal Governments under nine Prime Ministers ruled Britain for 52 years. With Ramsay MacDonald’s Laborites and the Tories monopolizing political luster since 1922, the Liberals developed party schisms and retired ungratefully to a bedrock representation of 20 Members of Parliament. It seemed evident last week that in retirement the Liberal Party had found time to think: about Britain and what they want for it, and what they want for their Party.

Lady Violet Bonham Carter, the Party’s great sage and great lady, put it: “The mind of the nation is moving left, but moving forward. Here is the Liberal opportunity. The country cannot look for life to the Tory party, nor will it get inspiration or new direction from the official Labor Party.”

The Party leader, Air Secretary Sir Archibald Sinclair, who from hailing distance could be mistaken for Disraeli, put it: “If we [the British people] are to avoid the alternative evils of economic anarchy and bureaucratic stagnation, we will have to make very considerable changes in the machinery of government.”

The assembly recommended:

> A federation of English-speaking peoples with “democratic control of foreign policy and a common defense force.”

> State control for armament manufacture and distribution.

> International police to enforce international justice.

> Internationalization of colonial possessions.

> International adjustment of rates of exchange and control of investment.

> State obligation to find jobs “for those who have served the country.”

The conference could credit itself with two achievements. It had made clear to Britain that this year’s Liberals accept a considerable amount of state planning, not as a goal as Britain’s socialists do, but as an expedient. More courageously than either the Tories or the Labor Party, it had offered Britain a few specifics on how to run the world after the armistice.