What the Young Member Said

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 92, 12 January 1935, Page 20

What the Young Member Said

?| HE King's Speech,” says “The Times.” gave an excellent start I to the new Session of Parliament. Its favourable reception in | the House of Commons was partly due to the outstanding merit JL of the speech of the mover of the Address, who expressed wittily and with conviction the ever-growing desire of a younger generation, immune to party catchwords, for activity and security in public policy.” The speech in question was delivered by Mr. N. K. Lindsay, M.P. fol Bristol South, and it made a great impression coming from a young man not yet thirty. Mr. Lindsay said : — “In a matter of some five weeks I shall celebrate my thirtieth birthdaj. If I may venture to attempt to interpret the views of the younger members, I think, wherever we may sit, we might say that we are all of us firmly determined to proceed with the work of reconstruction without interruption either by .external warfare dr internal conflict. “We claim, of course, no monopoly for that point of view! and I only mention it because I can only speak for the younger men and, perhaps, because some of the younger members are sometimes more closely in touch with the post-war electorate.

“In every constituency up and down this country there are vast masses of people who own no fixed political allegiance, but who are stirred and moved by. two fundamental human motives. The first is the desire for security." They want to know that if they build a house they will be allowed to inhabit it in the years to come. They want, to know that if they plant a garden their children will enjoy its fruits. Above all, they want to know

that they can plan their lives without constant dread of the terrible interruption of war.

“But there is a second motive. Security alone is not enough. I know that my right hou. friend, the Lord President of the Council (Mr. Baldwin), is a great admirer of the writings of the late Mr. F. S. Oliver, and I would venture to remind the House of one passage in those writings. The late Mr. Oliver, in his book on ‘Walpole,’ states:—

“ ‘Danger is the inseparable companion of honour. The greatest deeds, in history were not done by people who thought of safety first. It is possible to be too much concerned with one's own salvation.’ “There is a growing realisation of the need for a greater measure of forethought and of conscious control of economic forces. “Special consideration is to be given to the needs of the distressed areas. Every member will welcome the care which is to be given to those sorely afflicted areas, but you cannot localise economics, and what you have already done for the field you may one day have to do for the factory; what you .■ire doing for Jarrow and Merthyr Tydfil you may one day have to do for Bristol and Montrose.

“Peace and war, India, industry and agriculture, the conditions of the people—all these things have to be handled in such a way as to combine order with progress, security with a. reasonable hope for the future. A revolutionary, either in a. red or a black, need have no care for the life of the people or for the historic continuity of English constitutions. “Our task is a harder one and much more worthy of accomplishment. It is our task to reform without oppression, to reconstruct without demolishing, to rebuild without destroying.”