COMMONWEALTH: Premier’s Speech

(British Commonwealth of Nations)

With a cheering, enthusiastic crowd at his heels, Ramsay Macdonald, British Premier, walked from his home at No. 10 Downing Street to the House of Commons.

There, from the Treasury Bench, he delivered a speech—his first as head of His Majesty’s Government.

The speech was unsensational and “vague,” particularly in its treatment of important domestic issues—unemployment, housing, agriculture, taxation. It was more an expression of Labor’s general attitude of mind than a concrete definition of policy.

Present in the leader’s seat among the crowded opposition benches was ex-Premier Baldwin. After the speech both he and ex-Premier Asquith, Liberal leader, congratulated Mr. Macdonald. In general the attitude of the house was fair. “Give Labor a chance.”

Some excerpts:

Initial sentences. “No Prime Minister has ever met the House of Commons under similar circumstances to mine. For the time being no party in the House has a majority. . . . I think we will have to think less about party than heretofore and to lay more and more emphasis upon the responsibility of individual members voting as responsible members of the House and not merely as party politicians.”

On parliamentary “tricks.” “I have a lively recollection of all sorts of ingenuities practiced by oppositions in order to spring a snap division upon the Government so that it might be turned out on a defeat. I have known bathrooms downstairs utilized, nor for legitimate purposes but for the illegitimate purpose of packing as many members surreptiously inside their doors as their physical limitations would allow. . . . I have seen this House practically empty when the bells began to ring and then turned into a riotous sort of market place by the inrush of members for the purpose of finding the Government napping and turning it out on a stupid issue. I am not going to go out on any such issue.”

The immediate program. “Up to the end of March we shall have to ask the House to give up most of its time to financial business—that we have inherited from our predecessors—for supplementary estimates in the main. We shall place before the House those resolutions carried at the imperial and economic conference.”

Treaties. “There are two important treaties that have been signed and have to be ratified. There is the treaty with Turkey signed at Lausanne [TIME, Aug. 6], and the more recent treaty which I am glad to say has just been signed between France and Spain regarding Tangier, [TIME, Dec. 31].

Housing. “The housing problem can only be solved when decent human homes are provided for most of the working classes of the country at rents which can be borne by the average income of those persons. . . . Provision for this has been made since the war by subsidies. We are going to continue that, and at present we shall continue it in relation to this problem of how we can build houses on the average for £500 and let them on the average for 9 shillings [$2], including rents and rates.”

Russia. “As Foreign Minister I recognized Russia with the fullapproval of the Government. The point of view I took was this. I want to settle all between Russia and ourselves—a very big job certainly, but a job that somebody sooner or later has to do. I made up my mind if any Foreign Secretary sat down to try to settle these questions with a representative of Russia who was not even a Charge d’Affaires, he might live to be as old as Methuselah and he would not settle them.”

The U. S. “So far as America is concerned, it would ill become me or this House to give it any advice. … As soon as America feels there is something large, something moral, in the spirit in which these [European] problems are being approached, then we will not have to go cap in hand to America to beg her to come in, but America will be perfectly willing to do her share in the great work.”

The Ruhr. “I must take this, the first opportunity, of paying my tribute to the hearty cooperation of M. Poincaré to the approaches I made on this subject. . . . We must consider such problems as reparations and the Ruhr from the point of view of France, of Great Britain and of Europe and do everything to find a satisfactory agreement.”

It was at this point that Ronald McNeil, former Conservative Secretary of Foreign Affairs, interrupted to ask: “Will the right honorable gentleman explain any particular in which this policy differs from that of his predecessors ?” The Tories laughed loudly, and Premier Macdonald replied. “I think I had better not. . . . I am responsible for my policy, but I am not going to mix myself up either with my predecessor or with my successor”

During the passages on Russia, loud opposition laughter greeted a sally by Commander Joseph Kenworthy, who asked the Premier whether the Government had conveyed condolences to the Soviet on the death of Lenin.

He got no reply.