The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 1908. THE MANCHESTER ELECTION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 17, 30 April 1908, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 1908.

THE MANCHESTER ELECTION

fOLITICAL prophecy has been described' as one of the most gratuitous forms of human error. Such predictions ' gang aft agley ' ; but there is no inherent improbability ' in the prophecy made regarding Mr. Winston Churchill when he was a rather meteoric war correspondent during the- Boer war : 1 Lord' Randolph Churchill will yet be -remembered as the father of Mr: Winston Churchill \ At thirty, he has risen to Cabinet rank, and the future -is full of roseate promise for him. But in the Northwest Manchester election, a few days ago, he received a check in his career when, on. a poll of eighty-nine - per cent, of the possible voters, he was heavily defeated by Mr. Joymson-Hicks, the Conservative candidate. Excitement ram a ' banker ', and the issue of the hard-fought contest, seems to have been generally .accepted as. a defeat for Freetrade and a victory for tariff reform. s There was, however, one other great Issue fought out in the North-west Manchester contest. This was the education question. ,- -It- played a -far more important part in determining the issue than last week's cable messages give it credit for. ,There exists!, throughout Lancashire a large and well-organised vote that is hostile to the education policy of the Government, and (says a> cotntempotoary), ' the recently published, statistics of public education explains the special interest of Lancashire churchmen in the result of the election '. The voluntary (religious) schools in, the county' of Lancashire number 1915, with an average attendance of 461,073, as against the 410 cotmcSl schools,, with an average attendance of 230,246. Our contemporary adds : ' Thus the .voluntary schools "throughout Lancashire outnumber the council school's by nearly five to one, and evien including -the populous centres where large and expensive cotuncil schools have' been erected, they still educate almost exactly double the number of children educated in the council schools. In the whole county there are only four educational areas in which the council schools outnumber the voluntary. On- the other hand, there are no fewer than eight large boroughs entirely dependent on voluntary schools for elementary education. There are other large boroughs where the

strength of voluntary over oouncdl schools is overwhelming.' In Manchester, there are 84 voluntary schools, wdth • an average attendance of 44,657, ( and 79 council schools, with an~ average attendance of 50,995.' The figures given -here imply a Large vote interested in the existence and efficiency of the religious schools and opposed to the educational policy of the G-overnnient. Consider- *• able numbers of these were enrolled in the Parents' League for the protection of the interests of the voluntary or denominational schools.

* In places where there is no council school, b'uti only a denominational one, the Nonconformist conscience has a grievance which Catholics (although they have spent enormous sums in providing their own schools) duly appreciate. The Government- pro>poisals, however, in their scheme for removing grievances, threatened to inflict greater ones. Among other things, they propose a scheme of unequal benefits from rates and taxes which would inflict a grave injustice upon the Catholic schools, and place them in a position of permanent inferiority. The Nonconformists are to have the schools v and the religious instruction which* they desire supplied' at the public expense. Catholics are to be^ required to pay their full share of rates and taxes for this purpose, but are to receive a very much smaller per capita contribution from these funds. This would mean the closing of a considerable number of our schools, especially in the poorer quarters of the great cities. Catholic feeling has been greatly stirred, both in and out of Manchester, by this proposed denial of the right of equal treatment ; and we have no doubt that many Catholic votes went, on this account, to swell the crushing majority which rejected Mr. Winston Churchill in Northwest Manchester. 'We have ', says the ' Tablet ', ' fairly bought our right to have Catholic instruction in the schools we have built for Catholic children, by -the millions spent in, ©reeling them, and the tens 'of thousands spent in their erection and repair. For the rest, we claim equal rights, and, as citizens who pay the education rate, we claim the right to share it '. This is the issue on which the North-west Manchester election was in part fought out.