FAMILY GOVERNMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 951, 19 April 1930, Page 9

FAMILY GOVERNMENT

TOO MUCH OF IT, SAYS NEWSPAPER WOMEN CAUSE CHANGE United P.A.—By Telegraph Copyright Reed. 10.15 a.m. LONDON, Friday. A striking onslaught on the “family” character of the present House of Commons is mfftie in a featured article in the “Daily Express,” headed “It May be the Mother of Parliaments But It Must Not be a Family Party.” The article refers to the maiden speeches of Miss Megan Lloyd George and the Prime’s Minister’s son, upon whom a host of fathers, brothers, sisters and mothers beamed from the galleries and from the floor of the House. It declares: “Family relationship is all very well in family circles, but the less we have it mixed up in the stern business of the House of Commons, or, indeed. any Parliament, the better. The assembly should consist of alert, even ruthless competitiveness and efficiency, which is unlikely to bew engendered by the amiability of family ties. DA certain amount of family tradition, of course, is inseparable from the House of Commons. This, within limits, is not undesirable. The old, accepted idea was father and son in succession. Nobody could cavil at an occasional example, but with the arrival of women in the House of Commons the relationship has taken strange turns and we may soon have mothers and daughters, likewise sisters. FRENCH VIEW “One reason why the French have lun all over us at the Naval Conferences is because they refuse to take seriously a nation which now admits women to Parliament and even to Cabinet. This sort of thing is all right in Finland and even in America, but the Continent does not expect it from traditional Britain. “Many may see nothing absurd in the idea of a mother, daughter, husband and wife sitting in Parliament, which is still the Capital of Empire, with masculine problems like India and Egypt to solve, but millions of others do.”