FAR FROM DEAD

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12617, 30 November 1926, Page 7

FAR FROM DEAD

BRITISH LIBERALISM MORE A FORCE THAN LABOUR PARTY MR WILFORD CONVINCED Back from a world tour in search of health Mr T. M. Wilford, looking as well as ever he did, arrived in Wellington yesterday by the Maheno from Melbourne. And his tour abroad has left him with the conviction that British Liberalism is by no means dead. “As everyone knows the Liberal Party is represented in the House of Commons by the smallest number ot members,” said Mr Wilford when discussing the Liberal Party’s position. “It is just a handful, but it polled about four million votes at the last election, and must always be recognised as a force. ‘‘A SUPERFICIAL VIEW” “The ‘New Statesman,’ the Labour weekly, said recently: ‘People who believe that the Liberal Party is dead seem to us to take an extremely superficial view of the position. They look at its divisions and its apparent lack of policy, and forget that when its fortunes were at their very lowest ebb it nevertheless polled four million votes. They believe just what they wish to believe, but you canuot kill a party by merely wishing it dead.’ “The ‘New Statesman’ further 6ays that there are millions of electors whose sympathies are substantially with the Labour Party, but who will not join the Labour Party for two reasons; first, because they will not ever submit to that theory ot legislation to which the Labour leaders still pay Up service, and second because they regard the Labour Party as a ‘class party,’ which, of course, it is, and which it must remain as long as its organisation is almost exclusively upon the economic organisation of the manual workers.” STILL BELIEVING He had discussed the position of the Liberal Party with men of the calibre of Sir John Simon, said Mr Wilford, and had found that they still had faith in their party. Any Liberals who had strong leanings to the Labour Party would refrain from joining that party because all Liberals considered freedom for the individual to be the foundation of Liberalism, and they could see no freedom for the individual under Socialism. “A Labour man, speaking in one of the districts in England, recently used these words in reference to the Communists of his party,” said Mr Wilford. “ ‘Our tail is wagging us, and we have lost prestige, and we cut less ice than the handful of Liberals.’ In my opinion after watching the House of Parliament for some months, that is true. For some reason many Labour men make poor Parliamentarians. They miss opportunities, they do not seem to understand the Standing Orders, and they have absolutely no cohesion whatever in debate. SCENE AFTER SCENE “I have witnessed scene after scene in the House of Commons where Ramsay MacDonald and J. H. Thomas have stood up in their places and turned round to the back benches of their party to try to quieten them, and keep them in order, only to find that the back benches simply ignored them. “Again, a Labour man seems resentful of interjections in the House of Commons, and these are allowed freely by the Speaker if they are to the point and not personal. Whether in their own meetings outside Parliament they are permitted to be heard in absolute

silence or not I cannot say, but when some of those brainy men such as Sir Hobert Home, Winston Churchill, Ronald McNeill, or Sir William Joyn-son-Hicks interject during Labour speeches the Labour men become angry, often insulting, and some are unable to keep their temper at all. THEY YELLED “I have watched scenes in the House which 1 hope will never occur in ours. When an interjection during a Labour member’s speech could not be answered a crowd in the back benches joined in merely yelling and holding up the debate for a time. The front bench members of the Labour Party do not act in this way. They are jParliainentarians and observe the decencies of debate and the Standing Orders. But why so many of the Labour members who interject most freely when other members are speaking cannot bear interjection without losing fheir temper I cannot understand. “I get into harness at once,” said Mr Wilford of himself. “I start my first case in the Supreme Court next Monday.” A MILLIONPROFIT FOR LIBERAL PARTY FUND BY SALE OF NEWSPAPERS. Australian and N it. Cable Association. (Received November 29, 7.15 p.m.) LONDON, November 29. It is understood that Mr Lloyd George has made at least £1,000,000 profit for the Liberal party bv the sale of the “Daily Chronicle” and other publications, thus doubling the party’s funds. The “Chronicle” and tlio “Sunday News” cost Mr Lloyd George £1,600,’000 in 1918, and tbo company lias since acquired two or three other papers, all of which it is now selling for about £3,000,000. A group of Calcutta merchants, including the EVirl of Rending (chairman), Sir David Yulo and .Sir Thomas Catto, has purchased Mr Lloyd George’s controlling interests in Newspapers, Limited. Tt is announced that the newspapers affected, including Hie “Dnilv Chronicle.” will follow a policy of progressive Liberalism,