THE NEW ANARCHY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 101, 14 September 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE NEW ANARCHY

Addressing a great meeting at Woodford Green last month, Mr. Lloyd-George waxed sarcastic at the expense of the opponents of his Insurance Act. These people, lie said, were starting a new anarchist movement. They were not "society people," properly speaking, but vulgar ranters hanging on the outskirts of society. Whenever an Act of Parliament was passed which they did not like, they lost their tempers and tried to punish somebody. If they could not punish the people responsible for the Act, they punished someone near to them, someone helpless, who had served them faithfully. "They can't get at me," said' the Chancellor, "so they are worrying their servants, threatening to reduce their wages and lengthen their hours if that is possible—and they always wind up by saying they will dismiss Mr. Lloyd George went on to say that it appeared to him that these people were always dismissing servants. When Sfr William Harcourt imposed death duties, servants were dismissed. When the speaker put on a super-tax, more servants were dismissed. Now the Insurance Act was coming into force, the last of the servants would have to go, and his hearers would see notices posted on the swell West End houses: "Not at home; her ladyship's washing day." These people who were preaching the new anarchy took it for granted that they would be allowed to prescribe the laws tliey would not obey. 'They seemed to be even inclined to'go further, and to prescribe the people who should be bound to obey the laws and those who weie to be exempt. They believed the onl\ fmietioll of the law was to keep the working class in ord'er. The law of instiling the, population against poverty was to be optional, but there would be a tremendous outcry if any section of the community took it into its head to consider the game law optional, or the law of rent optional. All progressive humanitarian legislation had to be compulsory, and the new anarchists would find to their cost that the power to enforce the law still existed.