BRITISH ELECTIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 228, 26 September 1929, Page 26

BRITISH ELECTIONS.

'THE FLAPPER'S OPPORTUNITY'

ANOMALIES IN VOTING

"GROTESQUE ELECTORAL SYSTEM."

(By S.S.)

Full and particular accounts of the recent general election at Home are now available and they make very interesting and instructive reading. "The Times'' — the "London Times," which in these later days has ,r added to its traditions an enormous amount of enterprise which would sadly shock its founders, father and eon, could they visit this earth again —has issued a book of some 150 pages, admirably printed and substantially bound, in which every feature of the great struggle between the contending political parties is recorded with accurate and, illuminative precision. From title page to imprint it is a veritable storehouse of information concerning constituencies, parties, ministers, governments and other factors that go towards shaping the destiny of a great democratic country. Many other publications of the same kind are in print, reflecting the keen interest taken by our Home people in the election of their Parliament and, incidentally, illustrating their conservative notions of popular representation. There still are eighteen constituencies in Great Britain and Northern Ireland each returning two members, and one, the Scottish Universities, returning three. In the eighteen constituencies cach elector, of course, has two votes and in the one, three. Previous to 1885 out of 463 members elected in England only 94 were returned by single-member constituencies, and with only two exceptions these constituencies were boroughs. The two-member constituencies still remaining include the City of London, Norwich, Preston, Derby and other survivals from the days when each county elected two knights of the Shire and each borough two burgesses. It wa6 in the early 'nineties that the New Zealand Parliament began to question the equity of the three-member system then existing in the cities and it was owing to independent representations made to the Government of the day that the single member constituency became universal in this country. A New Era. So much for the past. The present and the future hold much more of interest, at any rate to the younger generation. The Home election of 1924, fallowing upon the defeat of the Labour Government, which had been dependent upon the half-hearted support of the much attenuated Liberal party, sent the Conservatives back with an overwhelming majority, they securing 415 seats in the House of Commons, while Labour secured only 151, Liberals only 44 and Independents only five. Mr. Stanley Baldwin, who by 'his personality makes an appeal to folk of all political creeds, again became Prime Minister and despite his somewhat uninspiring slogan of "Safety First," he managed to hold his party together wonderfully well until a. few months before the dissolution preceding' the recent election when the tide in the country began to flow against him. He retained a majority of 185 to the end, however, Labour having gained 11 seats, Liberals two and Independents two. To-day, it may be reiterated, Labour holds* 287 seats, Unionists 260, Liberals 59 and Independents nine. A good deal is being made of the fact that while Labour with 8,385,301 votes secured 287 seats the Conservatives with 8,059,639 votes, 274,33S more, secured only 260. It has been said, indeed, that the" Conservatives were defeated by the vagaries of the ballot rather than by the will of the electors. But there are factors bearing upon this point which cannot be ignored. The fact that the Conservatives had 20 more candidates in the field than the Liberals had, and 1 7 more than the Labour party had, must have given them a substantial advantage over their opponents in the aggregation of votes. It will be remembered that at the general election here last November the same kind of thing happened, the Reformers contesting 71 seats, polling 267,079 votes and capturing 26 seats"while the Uniteds contested 57 seats, polled votes and oaptuicd 30 seats. The Flappers' Triumph. The Home election of 1918 took place a few weeks after the signing of the Armistice and was based on a franchise which extended to women of 30 years of age and over the right to vote. "Once the Parliamentary vote was given to women," the "Times" declares, a decade after the event, "it was impossible to resist the demand for an equal franchise for the two sexes. A measure embodying this final extension of the franchise was accordingly introduced in the last Parliament by the Conservative Government and the opposition to it was negligible." It was obvious that the compilation of the new register, with an electorate of 28,500,000, an increase of 5,000,000, would be a heavy task and consequently it was decided that the register should not come into operation until May 1, 1929, This was tantamount to an assurance that the next election would not take place earlier than that date, Mr. Baldwin having undertaken that whenever it., came women would be entitled to vote on the same conditions as men. But for this undertaking the Government probably would gave gone to the constituencies earlier than it did, several propitious opportunities for such a step having occurred during the later years of. its term of office. Whether or not the great army of young ladies—styled "flappers," by their own provincial Press ——fully appreciated the magnanimity of the Conservative leader is doubtful, but history when it comes to be written cannot dare to ignore the personal and political virtues of this large-hearted, broad-minded and truly patriotic statesman. The "flappers," whatever their party leanings may have been, must have swollen enormously the attendance at the polls. Opening the "Times" record at random I found that the number of men enrolled in Doncaster, a typical provincial town, increased between 1921 and 1929 from 24,867 to 29,738, and the number of women from 15,760 to 28,475, while in scores of similar towns the women outnumbered the men by hundreds. What Critics Say. ,My friends of the Proportional Representation Society—among whom the Rt. Hon. Phillip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the new Labour Ministry, and Mr. John H. Humphreys, the secretary of the society, will be remembered as visitors to New Zealand some 14 or 15 years ago—have not been slow in sending me from the figures of the recent election some "horrid examples" of the results arising from' the single electorate system of voting. They show

me that in three mining and industrial areas, Durham, Glamorgan and Lanarkshire, Labour with 833,123 votes, secured 40 seats, while the Conservatives with 402,733 votes secured one and the Liberals with 357,196 votes none. In London, with its 61 seats, a scarcely less outrageous result was obtained. Labour, with 784,646 votes, secured 36 seats; Conservatives, with 754,242 votes, 23 seats; Liberals, with 353,737 votes, two seats, and "other parties," with 14,852 votes, no seats. Again in Yorkshire West Biding, with 43 seats, Labour, with 853,920 votes, secured 34 seats; Conservatives, with 507,524 votes, eight seats; Liberals, with 357,365 votes, one seat, and "other parties," with 1973 votes, no seats. lam reminded by my friends that at the general election of 1924 the Conservatives in Great Britain secured 389 seats, with 7,481,799 votes, while Labour, Liberals and "others" between them secured only 184 seats with 8,639,106 votes. And New Zealand proclaims that what is good enough for the Mother Country is good enough for the Dominion! Having foresworn the privilege of further discussing electoral reform I may be permitted to quote what the three party leaders at Home have had to say on this question. "We will never," Mr. Baldwin emphasised, "get that perfect democracy at which we aim until the whole people plays its part." "If our present system were to repeat in 1929 our experience of 1924," admitted the less imaginative Mr. MacDonald, "it could not be defended." "We have got," Mr. Lloyd George proclaimed, "an anomalous, unjust and grotesque electoral system, which is a fraud and a mockery of democracy." And Ave may leave it at that.