Foreign News: Stanley for Stability!

Every Englishman likes kippered herring for breakfast, and especially “Yarmouth Bloaters,” which are quite superior “kippers.” Therefore true Britons have a sentimental liking for the old East Anglican city of “Yarmouth on the Yare.” Last week 2,600 Conservative Party Delegates bustled out to Yarmouth, assembled in the famed “Seaside Hippodrome,” and became momentously the Conservative Party Conference. Solemn was the occasion, for a platform would soon be drafted on which the Party will appeal to the country in the forthcoming Parliamentary Election.

Across the Hippodrome stretched a 100-foot banner-slogan: Stanley for Stability! Excited delegates knew that Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was about to speak and officially open the national campaign. When it seemed that beloved Stanley Baldwin was going to be just a bit late, as usual, the Conference vented high spirits by singing to an old, rollicking tune a new and most significant campaign song:

Mr. Baldwin thought it time,

Parley-vous,

To bring the ladies into line,

Parley-vous,

Along with men an equal “vote,

If only to stop the Socialists’ dope,

Inky pinky Parley-vous.

“Flappers” & “Reds.” The song sums up in a few catchy and atrocious rhymes the nub of what Stanley Baldwin had to say when he finally arose and spoke. The line about “ladies” having “along with men an equal vote” refers to the chief accomplishment of the Baldwin Cabinet, namely enfranchisement of 5,000,000 young British women by the passage of the famed Equal Franchise (“Votes for Flappers”) Bill (TIME, Aug. 13 et ante).

The doggerel line about stopping the “Inky pinky . . . Socialists’ dope” proved to be almost the theme of Prime Minister Baldwin’s platform speech. Said he: “The great campaign issue is once more, as it was in 1924, the challenge of Socialism against constitutionalism and against British individualism. On that issue the way that the People of Great Britain will vote cannot be doubted!”

These words, though blatant, were important, and vitally significant. They meant that the British Conservative Party expects to win again by telling John Bull and his women that the Labor Party (Socialist) is a pack of “Reds.” In 1924 the “Red” stigma was fastened upon Labor Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, when the Conservatives released the notorious “Zinoviev Letter” on election eve. The “Letter” purported to show that Labor Leaders were receiving pay and orders from “Moscow.” Today, after four years of pointing at the Red Bogey Man, the Conservatives and “Stability” Baldwin apparently believe that they can strike the old attitude again and win.

In referring to the third British party (Liberal), Mr. Baldwin said: “The most they even hope for is to achieve the position of holding a ‘balance of power.’*

“The country has a right to ask them before the election whether, if they hold it, they will put the Socialists in office. The Labor [Socialist] Party still is divided, undisciplined and weakly led, so that the strength of the extremists [communists] within their ranks makes them dangerous.”

In short, Conservative Baldwin tried to give the impression that a vote for the Liberals is indirectly a vote for the Laborites, Socialists, “Reds.” In the great days when Gladstone was the pillar of Liberalism such an imputation would have been merely absurd; but today the Liberal Party is led and dominated by mercurial David Lloyd George, and should the ‘balance of power’ ever come into his hands again he is only too likely to side with the Laborites.

Of Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Baldwin said grimly: “One piece of campaign literature we are going to use will be the writings of Mr. Lloyd George in the foreign press at a time when our country was struggling and in difficulties.” This referred to the Welshman’s syndicated feature articles to William Randolph Hearst on the subject of the “British General Strike” (TIME, May 10 to 24, 1926). Conservatives hope to tag Syndicator Lloyd George with the political high crime of having been in sympathy with the strikers.

In polishing off the Liberals, Orator Baldwin popped an epigram: “The Labor creed is Socialism with the courage of its convictions, but modern Liberalism is Socialism without even the courage of its conviction.”

“Safeguarding.” Keenest disappointment was voiced by many Conservatives that the Prime Minister’s speech did not announce as an issue “Safeguarding,” or in U. S. parlance “Protective Tariff.”

Almost tearful were the pleas for protection voiced to the Conference by many an industrialist delegate, including one from Sheffield who cried: “Forty-three more of our blast furnaces have been shut down in the past twelve months! If the steel industry isn’t safeguarded, I predict that not a single blast furnace will be operating in England by the spring of 1931.”

The Prime Minister, who lost the election of 1923 on the “Safeguarding” issue remained deaf to all such pleas, although he himself is in the steel business, and only said:

“Safeguarding was introduced by the [Lloyd George] Coalition Government and now has been experimented with for seven years. It has been shown a success in some industries. Many of the members of our party, I know, feel it ought to be extended rapidly. But it is not wise in a democracy to go too far in front of public opinion. The British public is slow to make up its mind, but it is thinking hard. . . . Today even Labor wants to restrict the effect of unfair competition from abroad. Only the Liberals would repeal the Safeguarding Act entirely. The Government is ready to facilitate safeguarding if individual industries prove the necessity of their being protected.”

Clearly these weasel words mean that Conservatives will have to hush up “Safeguarding” as an issue, because “Stability” Baldwin, although personally approving it, fears that the British public is still traditionally made up largely of “free traders.”

Significance. On the whole Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s platform speech was negative and uninspiring, but admirably and typically Conservative. It was the speech of a warmly beloved British leader whose personal hobby is keeping pigs, and who consistently manages to “muddle through.”

A particularly fine piece of “muddling through” was the passage in which Mr. Baldwin referred to invalid Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain, who, just prior to his breakdown (TIME, Sept. 10), succeeded in thoroughly entangling and ensnarling Franco-U.S.-British relations with respect to disarmament (TIME, Aug. 13).

Sturdy, English, loyal Stanley Baldwin said of his sick friend: “I want to pay the highest tribute to my colleague, Sir Austen Chamberlain. The whole country and all Europe realize the devotion, skill and patience with which he has handled our foreign affairs for four years. With health renewed, I hope he will handle them four years more. . . . A great part of Europe’s progress toward peace is due to his labors, and in those labors he has nearly worn himself out.”

When newspapers containing accounts of the Prime Minister’s speech reached Bewdley, his birthplace, a “Stability Baldwin” rally was held by the Venerable Guild of Bewdley Clay Pipe Makers. While guildsmen puffed their long-stemmed clay pipes, a onetime Mayor of Bewdley, Joseph (“Fiery Joe”) Oakes, declaimed the speech entire, only stopping now and then to puff, at a pipe, which he said, “Was first smoked by Stanley Baldwin himself, when he was last among us.”

Liberals began their campaign, last week, coincidentally with Conservatives. Said Mr. David Lloyd George, in Welsh, to an audience at Llangefni, Wales: “You have just heard me speak in support of my daughter Megan, who has been selected as the prospective Liberal candidate for Parliament from this division. . . . I am supporting her candidacy not because she is my daughter but because she is the choice of the party. . . . I cannot be responsible for anything she may say or do if elected.”

*i. e. Between the two major parties: Laborite and Conservative. The Liberals held just such a balance in 1924 and used their leverage to assist into office the first and only British Labor Cabinet, namely that of Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald.