LIBERAL PARTY CONFERENCE

Hokitika Guardian, 17 October 1928, Page 3

LIBERAL PARTY CONFERENCE

LLOYD GEORGE’S SPEECH.

NO COMPROMISE WITH OTHER PARTIES.

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 12. Air Lloyd George, the Liberal leader speaking at the Liberal Conference at Yarmouth, made an important declaration regarding the Liberal position at the general election, which will take place next year. Mr Lloyd George made the forecasts that there would be an overwhelming majority of votes against the Conservative Government; that there would be an enormous accession off strength to the Liberals; and that, whatever party was in a. majority, it would not be Labour.

Dealing with the possibility of no one party having a definite majority over the others, Mr Lloyd George said the Liberal Party was equally opposed to both the Conservative and the Labour Parties. if the ! prosperity and well-being of the country were likely to fall into the hands of either of these two parties,, the Liberals would have very little to choose between strangling that prosperity with the rope of tar iffs or drawing and quartering it by Socialism.

Whatever might befall the Liberals they could enter no understanding, for\mal or informal, with any party, under any circumstances, to advance measures or policies in which they disbelieved, and which they knew to he detrimental to the interests olf the country. If a Liberal Government were not attainable in the next Parliament, there was a vast fertile territory, common to men of progressive minds in all parties, which they could agree to cultivate together, but the conditions of co-operation and understanding must be honourable to all and humiliating to none.

“ Let me say once and for all,” said Mr Lloyd George, “that we shall decidedly and emphatically decline to contemplate the possibility of a repetition of the experiment of 1924, which proved so disastrous.” He referred, of course, to the support then given by the Liberals to the Labour Party which kept the Labour Party in office ifor nine months, though the Labour Party had no clear majority in the House of Commons. This was only justifiable as an experiment, he said, and it was no fault of the Liberals that it faijed. A prominent Labour leader had assumed that if the Liberals were in a minority they would again help Labour into power. His (Mr Lloyd George’s) reply was that m vain was the net spread in the sight of the bird,” which had been caught in the same net before and escaped with its life, but left a good many feathers behind.”

“We shall resist any attempt to overthrow the great fiscal system upon which our trade has been built up arid nny attempt to establish Socialism,” he added. Tories and Labour supporters were conspiring to destioy J JWnlism by putting up candidates with no chance ctf winning, but with a view to spoiling the Liberal chances In straight-out fights. He predicted flint +he electorate would overwhelmingly condemn the Government, giving + ’ e Liberals an enormous accession of strength. Whatever party had a majority it would not lie Labour. In conclusion, the Liberal leader reiterated that the Liberals would tight the election as an independent party. They expected no quarter from either the. Conservatives or Labour, and asked for none.