Lloyd George Beats Liberal Drum

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 484, 13 October 1928, Page 9

Lloyd George Beats Liberal Drum

AN INDEPENDENT PARTY Will Resist Any Fiscal Overthrow SOCIALISTS SNUBBED ( Australian and If.Z. Press Association > (United Service) Received 10.58 a.m. LONDON, Friday. THE Liberals have little choice between strangling prosperity with a tariff rope, and drawing and quartering it with Socialism, therefore iliev would fight the General Election as an independent Party, and act in the next Parliament independently, declared Mr. Lloyd George at the Liberal Conference at Yarmouth, amid enthusiastic cheering.

“We shall resist any attempt to overthrow the great fiscal system on which our trade has teen built up, . and we. shall resist any attempt to es- ; Cablish Socialism.” He added that the Tories and Labon rites were conspiring to destroy Liberalism. They were putting up candidates who had no chance of winning, with a vis-w to spoiling the Liber als’ charges in straight fights. - Mr. Lloyd George predicted that the elector ate would overwhelmingly condemn tVie Government, giving the Liberals .an enormous accession of strength. Whatever party had the majority, it would not be Labour. He snubbed iVte Labourites for rudely refusing invitations which had not been extended to them about allying themselves with the Liberals. “It will ba' time enough to refuse offensively when they get the Liberal Party’s card, with R.S.V.P. on the corner,” he declared. LIBE.RAL RUIN “The Daily Herald” in an editorial says: “Our reply to Mr. Lloyd George is that his hopes of holding the balance of power will fall to the ground. The Liberal Party is in ruins. Nobody knows that .better than Mr. Lloyd George, one of the chief authors of its ruin. It may linger a long while on the political stage, but the days of his greatness are gone, never to return. The Liberals, to achieve power, must win 280 seats. The odds are it will lose 280 deposits in the general election. Labour is the only party entering the fight confident of victory.”

NO QUARTER ASKED' LIBERALS TO FIGHT ON NO HELP FOR LABOUR British Official Wireless Reed. noon. RUGBY, Friday. 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 Labour Parties. If the prosperity and wellbeing of the country were to fall into the hands of either of these two parties the Liberals would have very little to choose between strangling prosperity with a rope of tariffs or drawing and quartering it by Socialism Whatever might befall the Liberals, they could enter into no understanding, formal or informal, with any party under any circumstances, to advance measures or policies in which they disbelieved and which they knew to be detrimental to the interests of 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 cooperation and u n d e r s tanding must be honourable to all and hum iliating to none. Mr. Lloyd George declared: “Let me say once and for all that we shall decidedly and emphatically decline

Mr. Lloyd George to contemplate the possibilitv 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 Labour in office for nine months though the Labour Party had no clear majority in the House of Commons. This was only justifiable as an experiment, said Mr. Lloyd George, and it was no fault of the Liberals that it failed. A prominent Labour leader h>ad assumed that if the Liberals were i lk \ a minority they would again help into power. Mr. Lloyd George’s rejvly was that in vain was the net sbi-pad in the sight of the bird, which had been caught in the same net before„ and had escaped with his life, but left a good many feathers behind. In conclusion, the Liberal leader reiterated that the Liberals would fight the election as an independent party. They expected no quarter from either the Conservatives or Labour, and asked for none. The Liberals would go on fighting, and in the end would triumph.