HOME POLITICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 May 1920, Page 5

HOME POLITICS.

THE LIBERAL SPLIT. ANTI-COALITION DEMONSTRATION. Bj Telegraph —P«ss Assn.—Copyrlght Received May 9, 5.5 p.m. London, May 7. Six hundred delegates attended a meeting of the National Liberal Federation at Leamington, and the meeting caused great excitement in view of the break between the two wings of the Party. The Attorney-General (Sir Gordon Hewart, K.C.), Dr. C. Addison (Minister of Health), Mr. F. G. Kellaway (Deputy Minister), Dr. T. .1. Macnamara (Secretary to the Admiralty), Mr. C. A. McCurdy (Minister of Food), and Sir William Sutherland, who represented the Coalition Ministers, were greeted with booing on entering the hall. It was im* mediately evident that Asquithiar.s were in overwhelming majority! The Federation Executive submitted a resolution declining Mr. Lloyd George's invitation for a fusion, declaring a continuance of the Coalition was calculated to mislead the electors.

Sir George Lunn, who presided, said there was no hope of Mr. Lloyd George returning to the Liberal fold. Jonah would not swallow the whale; the whale, as usual, swallowed Jonah. Disorder was continuous when the Coalitionists spoke. Dr. Addison was interrupted again and again, and Dr. Macnamara, in a fighting speech, was continually booed. While Mr. Kellaway was speaking the scene was pandemonium, culminating in Mr. Kellaway saying he preferred the company of his present associates to some of those who took refuge in a tabernacle in order to assassinate Campbell-Bannerman. There were cries of ''liar," and the uproar was so great that the Attorney-General led the Coalitionists from the hall, and held a protest meeting on the steps of the Town Hall.' The Federation resolution was carried unanimously.

A mass meeting of Coalition Liberals will be held in London next week, when the Ministers who were prevented from speaking at Leamington will state the case of the Coalition. Members of the House of Commons are also organising electoral machinery in order to safeguard their position in their constituencies.— Aus.-N.Z. Cable ABsn.