Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1929. BALANCING FEATS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 145, 16 December 1929, Page 10

Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1929. BALANCING FEATS

Three-partyism has of late been running remarkably true to form. In the Old Country, and in New Zealand, has been seen the spectacle of a minority Government—in the role of a political Blondin—accepting a friendly hand first on one side of the rope, then on the other. The two men on the ground do not like offering their hands to Blondin at the same time; but they seem to be still more anxious, in a critical moment, not to withdraw hands at the same time and precipitate a crash. So there has been some alternating in Blondin's favours at this end of the globe; and the prospect of a similar incident of help and no-help, first on this side and then on that, has been the main theme of recent cablegrams concerning the British Labour Government's Coal-mines Bill. That measure has been so designed as to present, to the Conservatives as well as to the Liberals, a pill and a strawberry. But as the Liberals' pill (dearer coal) may turn out to be the Conservatives' strawberry, and vice versa, the prospect is held out that Blondin will be found bowing to the Liberal Left when the shorter hours and national organisation clauses are at issue, and resting his staff on the Conservative Right when the pool and the price of coal are at stake. If so, a situation reminiscent of the United Government's Labour support against Reform land attack, and the same Government's Reform support against Labour's Civil Service demonstration, will be reproduced in the House of Commons, in whose atmosphere these comings and goings of a Labour-ruled three-partyism seem to be somehow out of place. Until forecast has been succeeded by fact, it will be premature to assume that Mr. Baldwin will be led into an admitted acceptance of dear coal for the sake of Conservative colliery owners. Mr. Lloyd George's Liberal amendment analyses the Bill as an attempt to make British coal-users pay for a plan to subsidise uneconomic or marginal coalmines, and to restrain economic coalmines. Can the Conservatives vote with the Government unless the Liberal indictment is completely rebutted? What strengthens the indictment U that it has been made in general terms before, and has never been satisfactorily replied to. Now that it has become specific and has been entered as a plea against a concrete proposal, before the highest Court, the British colliery industry is very definitely on its defence, and its reply is wanted. That cost-raising inefficiency that Liberal coal-users allege against British colliery owners is found in actuality in New South Wales, where employer and employee have forced each other tip until users of coal cannot cmrry the level of pay and prices to which the coal industry has attained, This realisation in Australia of the results of the illness diagnosed in Britain by the Liberal doctors is not without significance in the Old Country, and the dramatic effect is heightened by the ominous massing of the contending forces at Rothbury, New South Wales, where the State Government threatens to end the deadlock of colliery idleness With the weapon of free labour. Just as a glance at three-partyism in the House of Commons invites a side glance at the position in the New Zealand House, so one cannot look at the Parliamentary coal war in the Old Country without extending the gaae one step farther, to the industrial Warfare culminating at Rothbury.

To get back to Blondin—the possibilities of the friendly hand between the man on the wire and the matt on the ground have not been exhausted. The friendly hand grip can keep Blondin off the ground; it can also pull the other fellow up on to the wire. As recently as 7th Decembelf London cabled suggestions of a Labour-Liberal pact Cabinet ("moderate Labourites and advanced Liberals") as a thanks-offering for the Liberal rescue of the Labour Government's unemployment insurance measure—and as a means to euchre the Maxton-Kirkwood-Wheat-ley Labour Left. Hardly had the picture been painted when the Coalmines Bill, and the dear coal allegation, and the Lloyd George amendment, cut clean across the canvas. This quick-change is in itself evidence of the instability of three-party-ism, whether expressed in the openly unstable form of a minority Government, or in the inwardly factious and fractious form of a loosely-built pact. Evidently Mr. Lloyd George is not to be pulled up on to the Labour wire just yet; and, even if he was, the results might be peculiar. In New Zealand, there has been no notieaabte suaxestion yet of a parallel

affinity between the Government and the smallest party in the House. If there is any affinity at all, it is between the two larger parties. The United Blondin is probably incapable of pulling Labour up with him on the wire, but Labour is capable of pulling Blondin down. Labour's leader is, however, reported to have said that he will not do anything to replace United with Reform, hence the status quo does not seem to be likely to be upset—unless United and Reform of their own motion come together. The co-operation suggested in 7th December cablegrams between British Labour and Liberalism would be far more normal as between New Zealand United and Reform. Will Blondin take the initiative, or will some crisis like the British Coalmines Bill or the New South Wales industrial war find our national interests still in the wavering hands of an unstable three-partyism?