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"Schemes involving heavy expenditure, however desirable, will have to wait until prosperity returns."
Snowden's Dole Policy. Since most Labor M. P.'s have promised their constituents more Treasury aid, not less, Mr. Snowden's speech thunderstruck his party with the conviction that it will badly handicap Labor candidates at the next elections. It was Laborite William John Brown who most completely lost his head. "This Socialist Government." he roared, "has neither the guts to govern nor the grace to get out!"
Amid lusty cheering by the Left Laborites, Mr. Brown went on:
"This speech [Snowden's] is the most revolutionary ever delivered in Parliament. ... It shows that the Labor Party has accepted the capitalist ideas they were sent to the House of Commons to expose! . . . Our whole front bench [Government party leaders occupy the right front bench] is at the bidding of the financial interests of this country! . . . The speech prepares the House for the sacrifice of unemployed men and women. . . ."
Two votes followed, the second most significant. On the straight Conservative motion of noconfidence, the Government won 310 to 235. Immediately the Liberals, with the Government's official support, proposed an amendment appointing a commission to study budgetary economics. The Conservatives were also agreeable, and the amendment should have passed unanimously. Instead, all the Left Laborites bolted, and their 21 votes were the only ones cast in opposition.
Chancellor Snowden did not help matters. Said he acidly of the Liberal measure: "We have already got about 70 committees. One more will do no good and no harm! Such little economies as committees may suggest don't count. It is only on policy that large savings can be made. Let the House of Commons face that!"
The present dole policy, as Mr. Snowden had already made clear, will cost some $275,000,000 if continued through the coming year. Of this, $75,000,000 is the State's regular contribution to the dole fund, and $200,000,000 will be technically "borrowed" by the fund from the Exchequer. Such borrowings already total some $350,000,000.
Alarm in the City. Following the Chancellor's speech, Liberal Leader David Lloyd George leaped next day into the Parliamentary fray, proceeded with characteristic bombast to out-Socialist the Socialists, and proposed in terms which he carefully left vague "prompt measures to utilize the labor of workers in useful and essential schemes of national development."
What businessmen of the City got out of all this was that Mr. Lloyd George was testing the possibility that he could switch over and usurp leadership of the Labor Party; and that Mr. Snowden, with his talk of imposing "the greatest sacrifices on those best able to bear them," meant capitalists no good. Within 24 hours the gross value of leading British Government securities had declined $150,000,000 on Change. And the pound sterling "broke sharply."
Nevertheless British politicians—seldom sensitive to even the most appalling facts of business—were more interested in two pip-squeak developments:
1) William John ("Guts") Brown was expelled for his language from the trade union group of Labor M. P.'s.