MANY TORIES RETIRE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 455, 10 September 1928, Page 9

MANY TORIES RETIRE

NEW CANDIDATES BY SCORE GREATLY CHANGED HOUSE (United P.A.—By Telegraph Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) LONDON, Saturday. More than half of the members of the House of Commons are reported to have decided not to seek re-election at the General Election in June. A political organiser who is in close touch with the parties predicts that the number will be largely increased. This news follows on the heels of the report that at least four members of the Cabinet will retire at the end of the present Parliament. These members are the Secretary for India, the Earl of Birkenhead, the Spore tary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir Austen Chamberlain, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. W. C. Bridgeman, and the Postmaster-General, Sir William Mitchell-Thomson.

This latest development means that the Conservative Party will have new to concern itself with the selection of scores of new candidates for the seats already held, because by far the greatest number of the reported retirements are by Conservative back-bench members. In some respects these members are strangely assorted, and include young men for whom a future has been prophesied, middle-aged men who have plodded on without special distinction, and elderly men with years of political service, who are suffering either from tiredness or disappointment.

Thus even before the noise and lunult of the General Election have begun to swell, it is certain that the complexion of the next Parliament and the next Ministry will be vastly different from the present.