GREAT BRITAIN: Positives of Action!

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If Sir Charles is not about to join Sir Oswald he at least parroted New Party doctrines in a letter to the press. For example Sir Oswald has said: "The Government runs to and fro like a chicken in front of a motorcar, cackling economy slogans to their opponents. The way to meet this nation's difficulties is not by negatives of panic but by positives of action!"

Wrote Sir Charles, parrotwise: "The Government instead of undertaking painful and ineffective economies should be occupied in demonstrating to the country that Socialism is an alternative to economy. In the present depressed condition of trade, great constructive Socialist measures are our only hope."

Such measures are precisely the Mosley program: The New Party will march to the polls demanding that a limited dictatorship or "Cabinet of Five" be set up with extraordinary powers in the economic and social realm. In foreign policy and traditional "affairs of state" (in the Victorian sense) the British Cabinet would remain in status quo.

Party Program. The definitive program of the New Party is the so-called Mosley Manifesto of last December. With such ringing phrases as "we surrender nothing of our Socialist faith!" it angles for the Labor vote. But Capitalists find comfort in the manifesto's explicit postponement of a decision whether British industry is to continue the possession of rich men or become property of a Socialist State.

The immediate question is not a question of the ownership but of the SURVIVAL of British industry!" cries the manifesto. "Let us put through [our] emergency program. . . . Afterward the political debate on the fundamental principle can be resumed."

Obviously so loose a phrase as "emergency measures" can be reshaped to any pattern as the New Party takes form. As a sample idea, "export trade" is to be "promoted" by "reorganization and by trade agreements with all nations" especially the Dominions.

"A national economic planning organization" plus "an import control board" and "a commodity board" are to "aim at building within the Commonwealth a civilization high enough to absorb the production of modern machinery," thus restoring Prosperity.

There will then be enough money in hand to pay Britain's debt to the U. S. with ease; but in the meantime the manifesto demands "some postponement of the [present] precipitate attempt to repay the War debt from taxation of this generation."

In the House last week Scot MacDonald interrupted a bickering debate with this cry of despair: "What is the use! What is the use of members watching the clock go round and getting up to indulge in talk, talk, talk? It is bringing this House into contempt—this listless, lifeless talk, talk, talk."

Lay-dee-day-dee Cynthia. For Lady Cynthia Mosley, fighting the New Party's battles last week meant standing up at mass meetings, giving as good as she got from hecklers of all the big parties, keeping her temper, sharpening her wit, pleading. . . .

"Your husband wants to be Prime Minister!" taunted a heckler.