Every Englishman likes kippered herring for breakfast, and especially "Yarmouth Bloaters," which are quite superior "kippers." Therefore true Britons have a sentimental liking for the old East Anglican city of "Yarmouth on the Yare." Last week 2,600 Conservative Party Delegates bustled out to Yarmouth, assembled in the famed "Seaside Hippodrome," and became momentously the Conservative Party Conference. Solemn was the occasion, for a platform would soon be drafted on which the Party will appeal to the country in the forthcoming Parliamentary Election.
Across the Hippodrome stretched a 100-foot banner-slogan: Stanley for Stability! Excited delegates knew that Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was about to speak and officially open the national campaign. When it seemed that beloved Stanley Baldwin was going to be just a bit late, as usual, the Conference vented high spirits by singing to an old, rollicking tune a new and most significant campaign song:
Mr. Baldwin thought it time,
Parley-vous,
To bring the ladies into line,
Parley-vous,
Along with men an equal "vote,
If only to stop the Socialists' dope,
Inky pinky Parley-vous.
"Flappers" & "Reds." The song sums up in a few catchy and atrocious rhymes the nub of what Stanley Baldwin had to say when he finally arose and spoke. The line about "ladies" having "along with men an equal vote" refers to the chief accomplishment of the Baldwin Cabinet, namely enfranchisement of 5,000,000 young British women by the passage of the famed Equal Franchise ("Votes for Flappers") Bill (TIME, Aug. 13 et ante).
The doggerel line about stopping the "Inky pinky . . . Socialists' dope" proved to be almost the theme of Prime Minister Baldwin's platform speech. Said he: "The great campaign issue is once more, as it was in 1924, the challenge of Socialism against constitutionalism and against British individualism. On that issue the way that the People of Great Britain will vote cannot be doubted!"
These words, though blatant, were important, and vitally significant. They meant that the British Conservative Party expects to win again by telling John Bull and his women that the Labor Party (Socialist) is a pack of "Reds." In 1924 the "Red" stigma was fastened upon Labor Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, when the Conservatives released the notorious "Zinoviev Letter" on election eve. The "Letter" purported to show that Labor Leaders were receiving pay and orders from "Moscow." Today, after four years of pointing at the Red Bogey Man, the Conservatives and "Stability" Baldwin apparently believe that they can strike the old attitude again and win.
In referring to the third British party (Liberal), Mr. Baldwin said: "The most they even hope for is to achieve the position of holding a 'balance of power.'*
"The country has a right to ask them before the election whether, if they hold it, they will put the Socialists in office. The Labor [Socialist] Party still is divided, undisciplined and weakly led, so that the strength of the extremists [communists] within their ranks makes them dangerous."