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Art. 14.-SOME ASPECTS OF THE LATE GENERAL ELECTION.

IT is just a year since, in the number of this Review which appeared on Jan. 15, 1923, we recorded the surprising results of the General Election which followed on the breaking up of the Coalition. We have now, contrary to all reasonable expectation, to comment, after an interval of only twelve months, on the details of another General Election, which if not so startling in its figures as that of November 1922, is likely to be much more momentous in its consequences. For it has brought us suddenly face to face with a problem which has been impending for many years, but which has only taken definite shape to-day-the problem of how Parliamentary government is to be conducted when the House of Commons is composed of three parties, none of which has a clear majority over the two others combined. Any difficulties which arose from the existence of a small 'third party' of Peelites in 1846-52, or of Home Rulers in 1892 and 1910, were child's play compared with the problem of 1924. The wonder is that the deadlock did not arise before: if Proportional Representation had been in use, it would certainly have occurred on several previous occasions, when the governing party, though it did not possess a majority among the electors, was fortunate enough to obtain a clear working majority in the House of Commons. The chances of the ballot are inscrutable, but never before do they happen to have produced this particular result, of the appearance of a Chamber in which every party is in a minority. And the most unfortunate thing is that the composition of the House reflects the decision of the electors with fair accuracy. We have to envisage the problem of how the governance of the realm is to be carried on when no party leader can claim, with the least vestige of plausibility, that he has the nation at his back.

This result has been produced by no theatrical ‘landslide' in the country: no transfer of votes by the million from one party to another has occurred. But there has been a landslide' in the representation of Great Britain in the House of Commons in consequence of the

action of 2 per cent. of the 14,000,000 electors who took part in the General Election. If Mr Baldwin's advisers at the Conservative Central Office informed him that there would be no serious fall in the numbers of the Conservative electors at the oncoming General Election, they were perfectly right in their estimate. As will be demonstrated in a later page, the party polled 5,400,399 votes this December; in November 1922 it recorded 5,457,871-practically the same number-a deficiency of 57,000 on 5,450,000 is barely worth mentioning. But, as the hazard of the ballot box has decided, this loss of one vote in ninety-five out of the whole strength of the party has resulted in absolute disaster, when accompanied by the appearance of a one and a half per cent. addition to the number of the enemy. No one could have foreseen such a vast result from such a small cause. Well-informed political prophets conceded that there would be some loss of Conservative seats, in consequence of the way in which Mr Baldwin's request for a mandate for Tariff Reform would inevitably be represented all over the country as a threat of dear food. But they estimated the probable number of seats in danger at twenty or thirty that a net eighty-seven would be lost would have seemed an incredible forecast, considering the comparatively small number of individuals who declared that their allegiance to Free Trade sans phrase would compel them to withhold their accustomed vote from their old party.

Undoubtedly, therefore, the feature of the recent election which first strikes the eye of the dispassionate observer, is that a maximum of change in the representation of the country in the House of Commons has been effected by a minimum of change in the relative position of the three parties, so far as numbers go. A powerful Government has been wrecked, and a solid majority of 75 destroyed, by the votes of under 300,000 persons in a total poll of over 14,000,000. Yet the numerical proportion of the parties to each other has barely been affected. In 1922 the Conservatives actually polled

* Where these figures differ by a few thousands from similar calculations to be found elsewhere, the discrepancy has been caused by divergent views as to whether certain Independent' members are to be counted as Conservatives, or not.

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5,457,871 votes: in 1923 they showed 5,400,399-a figure still far ahead of that of their rivals: for the Labour vote has only risen from 4,251,011 to 4,358,615; and the Liberal vote from 4,119,012 to 4,304,578.* But the Conservatives' predominance is considerably greater than these figures indicate: since we must make allowance for the fact that no less than 35 seats in their hands were uncontested at this General Election, so that the number of the voters belonging to these 35 constituencies does not appear in the statistics given above. There are only eleven Liberal and three Labour seats in similar condition. Since in all such constituencies as these, opposition is allowed to be hopeless, on account of the complete predominance of the adherents of the sitting member, we must allow a very heavy numerical superiority to the party holding the seat, when making our estimate of the total of the voters belonging to these 49 uncontested boroughs and county divisions. The greater part of the 35 which belong to the Conservatives (e.g. the City of London, the two Westminster Divisions, South Kensington, Reigate, East Surrey, Putney, Westmorland, the two Antrim seats, etc.) are localities in which the 'runner-up,' if he had appeared, would have been a Liberal, not a Labour man. We may hypothetically add about 525,000 to the Conservative total, 170,000 to the Liberals, and 85,000 to the Labour party, as the probable poll for these 35 seats-averaging each at 30,000 electors, and granting that the predominant party polled a net 50 per cent. of the names on the register, and the minority not more than 25 per cent. For the eleven uncontested Liberal seats (5 in non-industrial Scotland and two in rural Wales) the allowance on a similar scale would be 165,000 Liberal voters, 57,000 Conservatives, and 30,000 Labour. The minority allowance on the three uncontested Labour seats (Ogmore, Wentworth, and Abertillery) should go entirely to the Liberals, as it is not likely that a Conservative candidate would have appeared in any one of them: we may put it at 22,000 Liberals to 45,000 allowed for the Labour majority.

It would therefore seem that the total polling strength

These figures are reached by adding to the totals published in the 'Times' of Saturday, Dec. 8, the votes given in the twelve belated ontests which were announced after that calculation was made.

of the three parties, composed of their actual votes plus the estimate allowed them on the 49 uncontested constituencies, in the proportion stated above, would be 5,982,399 Conservatives, 4,518,115 Labour, 4,661,578

Liberals.

If our calculations are anything like correct, it is of course absurd that the Labour party, with about 150,000 adherents less than the Liberals, should have 36 members more in the House of Commons than their rivals. In an ideal Chamber-chosen by an elaborate use of Proportional Representation and allowing for six 'Independents'-the relative numbers of the parties ought to be something like 240 Conservatives, 186 Liberals, and 183 adherents of the Labour cause.

But an ideal House of Commons from the point of view of Proportional Representation never occurs. Obviously the Conservatives were very lucky in 1922, and obtained by small majorities, where there were only two candidates, and by sheer hazard in some threecornered contests, a good many more seats than they could have reckoned upon. This time Labour is in luck also, and Liberalism (as in 1922) has been hardly treated by Fortune.

Lest, however, we should overstate the ill-luck of the Liberal party, we must bear in mind that a very large number of the votes given for them on this occasion were not really their own. Wherever they were fighting Labour, and no Conservative candidate was forthcoming, as happened in some Scottish constituencies and in many North-country English ones (e.g. Greenock, Clackmannan, East Newcastle, Consett, Consett, Houghton-le-Spring), the Liberal poll of 1922 was suddenly increased by many thousands in 1923. These were the transferred votes of Conservatives, who had by no means been converted to Liberalism, but who wanted to keep the Labour man out by any means in their power. And in many English country constituencies, where the contest was a simple one between Liberal and Conservative, Labour votes, for the opposite reason, were given to the candidate who was-of the two-most friendly to Labour principles. This accounts for the sudden upward leap in the Liberal poll in such localities as Hexham, Harborough, Stroud, Thornbury, where in 1922, but not in 1923, a Labour

candidate was forthcoming. There can be no doubt that the Liberal party gains, in this fashion, many more extraneous and reluctant helpers than does either Conservatism or Labour. As we shall presently demonstrate, and as is perfectly reasonable, hardly any Conservative ever votes for a Labour man, and hardly any Labour man for a Conservative. The Liberal, on the other hand, gets frequent casual help from one or other of the rival parties at the polls. This is the advantage which comes from being a sort of middle party, by no means so unattractive to the more moderate men among the extreme parties as these last are to each other. Even when local leaders urge abstention, by way of protest, they are by no means universally obeyed by their followers.

The second fact which strikes the observer as abnormal in the newly elected House of Commons is that no less than 209 of its members represent a minority of the votes in their own constituencies, polled in a threecornered contest. The proportion is not very different between the parties; 94 Conservatives are in this position out of 259, or 36.2 per cent.; 70 Labour men out of 191, or 36.6 per cent.; and 48 Liberals out of 155, or 31 per cent. It might be supposed that every one of these members had an unsafe seat. But in many cases this is not so: for example, a Liberal who has emerged from a three-cornered fight with a few votes more than each of his Conservative and Labour opponents, need not fear that at the next election a Conservative-Labour combination for his expulsion is probable. On the other hand, a victorious Labour member in a similar situation must regard it as almost certain that, if no Conservative candidate appears, when next the polls are open, the Liberal will evict him with ease. The future prospects of a Conservative member who has won a seat on the minority vote are neither so good as those of the Liberal, nor so bad as those of the votary of Labour. Supposing at the next general election that no Labour candidate is forthcoming, the sitting Conservative member will fare badly; for Labour voters disobey in large numbers any order from their leaders to abstain from polling, and openly support the Liberal. On the other hand, if no

In the constituency which the author of this article knows best, there was a stringent direction issued by the Labour Council that no votes were

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