FOREWORD
Since the last words of this book were written the political temper of the nation has been tested by the General Election and has been revealed by the mighty majority of the Conservatives, the dismissal of the first Labour Government, and the all but mortal blow to the Liberal Party.
It would be a bad thing for the British people if that sweeping change were the sign of reaction to wooden-headed principles of autocratic rule and class legislation. It would be a worse thing for the world. But the new Conservative Government will have no support from the majority of those who voted for it if it interprets its power as a mandate for militarism, jingoism, or anti-democratic acts. The verdict of the ballot box was, certainly, not in favour of any black reaction, but in condemnation of certain foreign, revolutionary, and subversive influences with which the Labour Party were believed, fairly or unfairly, to be associated.
It is true that the Labour Ministers had denounced Communism, and during their tenure of office had revealed in many ways a high quality of statesmanship and patriotism. But all this good work was spoilt in the minds of many people of liberal thought, anxious to be fair to Labour, by the uneasy suspicion that behind the Labour Party, and in it, there were sinister influences foreign in origin, anti-British in character, revolutionary in purpose. Up and down the country some of its supporters indulgedin loose-lipped talk about Social revolution, preached a class war, paraded under the Red Flag. Political incidents not quite clear in their origin, not fully explained, intensified this national uneasiness, developed into something like a scare, in minds not naturally hostile to Labour ideas. They made allowance for exaggeration, political lies and slanders, but when all allowance had been made suspicion remained that if “Labour” were given a new lease of power it might play into the hands of a crowd fooling with the idea of revolution, not as honest as some of the Labour Ministers, not as moderate as the first Labour Government. It was a risk which the people of Great Britain refused to take. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and his colleagues failed to prove their independence from their own extremists, and Liberal opinion entered into temporary alliance with Conservative thought to turn them out.
To men like myself, standing politically in “The Middle of the Road” between the extremists, the downfall of the historic Liberal Party is a tragedy and a menace. It brings the possibility of class conflict nearer by the elimination of a central balancing party of moderate opinion. That possibility will become a certainty if Mr. Baldwin’s big majority drifts into reaction, or into lazy disregard of urgent national distress. But I am inclined to believe that the new Government will be more Liberal than is pleasing to some of its reactionary supporters as Mr. MacDonald’s Government was more moderate than the wild crowd who tried to force the pace. The nation as a whole will not tolerate black reaction any more than red revolution, and England stands steady to its old traditions of caution and commonsense. Those qualities will be needed in times of trouble not far ahead.
Philip Gibbs.