On This Day, 6 February 1918

Birmingham Daily Gazette

Wednesday 6 February 1918

THE OUTLOOK

THE PUERILITY OF PARLIAMENT

Both Houses of Parliament have disgraced themselves in the treatment of the “P.R.” and the Alternative Vote over a Bill which is to enfranchise eight million men and women, and to democratise the methods over election. In such a sweeping reform, the utmost care should have been taken to secure, first, the true rule of the majority, second, the adequate representation and protection of minorities. By the absurd compromise sent up to the Lords by the House of Commons yesterday, both these objects stand in jeopardy. Proportional Representation was rejected altogether, and through this act, caucus majorities such as this have enslaved Birmingham and made it a by-word for political mechanism at the expense of free and intelligent public discussion, and will still have the chance of ruling the roost; and it may remain possible for the Liberal and Labour electors of our city to be without a single voice in Parliament.

We can understand why Mr. Austen Chamberlain relishes that sort of thing, and denounces “P.R.” as likely to reduce Birmingham politics to a condition of sterility and impotence. What he really meant was that “P.R.” would sterilise the power of the caucus to which his own political fortunes are attached, and render impotent the vote-as-you-are-told tradition which taught Birmingham citizens to pawn their political consciences to a party or a person. Fortunately, Mr. Austen Chamberlain is not strong enough in his personality to hope to maintain the domination of his distinguished father. “Chamberlainism” as a mere automatic cult is dying. The administrator who had to leave the India Office because his lack of control of that department was partly responsible for the ghastly sufferings in Mesopotamia, will have to face a new kind of music. Nor will the city forget that Mr. Neville Chamberlain’s experiment as a sudden super-man in the National Service fiasco covered Birmingham with derision in the eyes of the country. Though Birmingham will not get “P.R.” as a guarantee of a fair share of minority representation, the Alternative Vote left in for the Boroughs will enable Liberals and Labourists to fight in the same divisions without the old evil of a split Progressive poll. The Peers may yet destroy even that safeguard, but if they do not, the Progressive parties in Birmingham should run candidates side by side in order to stimulate political enlightenment and to give advanced citizens a choice.

In limiting the operation of the Alternative Vote to the boroughs, the House of Commons is leaving the country constituencies to be the prey of minority representation, which is a worse evil than the suppression of minorities under the refusal of “P.R.” That the House of Commons should have made so weak and inconsequent a concession to the Peers is a lamentable proof of the decadence of our present M.P.s, who are tired out and stale to an alarming degree. In the more industrialised county divisions, where there are large mining districts incorporated in rural areas, both Liberal and Labour candidates will be demanded; and the Alternative Vote was just as necessary to secure majority representation under such conditions as in the boroughs. All the difficulties brought by this unseemly quarrel between the Houses, in a scramble to get the Bill home this session, could have been avoided if the Government had played the game with regard to the original proposals of the Speaker’s Committee. But when Mr. Lloyd George threw “P.R.” overboard on the plea that he did not understand it, and had never even studied it, this deadlock was inevitable. It meant that Mr. Lloyd George had surrendered to the Unionists who put him into office.