BRITAIN FACES ANOTHER TEST
Cranston, Maurice
Britain Faces Another Test By MAURICE CRANSTON London WITH the Parliamentary elections well behind her, Britain will soon be preparing for the first local elections since Autumn of 1938, to be...
...Under the old system few people under 28 actually got a vote because the procedure of registration was so slow and inefficient...
...Pancras—is such a body, where the Tories hold a slight majority of about 25 to 20 over the Laborites and are up against some first-class political minds...
...And they certainly are dull where councils are one-party outfits, as in Chelsea or Westminster (100 per cent Tory) or Bermondsey and Poplar (100 per cent Labor...
...Britain Faces Another Test By MAURICE CRANSTON London WITH the Parliamentary elections well behind her, Britain will soon be preparing for the first local elections since Autumn of 1938, to be held next November...
...Traditionally, local politics are dull, and the dullest people get into them...
...I HOPE the new Representation Act will tend to create two-party councils elsewhere in London...
...Under the Representation of the People Act, put through Parliament by Home Secretary Herbert Morrison a short time ago, everyone over 21 will in the future be able to vote in local elections...
...Labor Councillors to be equally dreary, small-minded trade unionists...
...Now everything has been put right, and everyone will be registered as a voter as he reaches the age of 21...
...Where there is only one, town halls are just little Reichstags...
...Hitherto suffrage was limited to ratepayers, the technical holders of houses in a borough...
...Local politics, where the larger party on a council has a small and insecure majority, can be as lively, or livelier, than national politics...
...Thus, my local council is a truly democratic forum, and debates there are always interesting...
...They need opposition to buck them up, and a good struggle, of course, will usually attract the most energetic personalities...
...THE younger generation, now effectually empowered to take part in local politics, is almost certain to unseat many of the stuffed shirts who now sit in our municipal councils...
...Here, too, the change is important...
...These are likely to prove interesting, not only because of the great change (to the Left) in the political temper of this country, but because they will be the first held with complete adult suffrage...
...Bernard Shaw no longer sits on the Socialist benches there, but other distinguished personalities include Charlotte Haldane and V. K. Krishna Menon, the Indian Congress leader...
...Morrison's new act has also brought up to date the Parliamentary voting register which now permits men in the armed forces overseas to vote by proxy...
...My own local authority—St...
...Tory Councillors tend to be dreary, small-minded shopkeepers...
Vol. 9 • August 1945 • No. 33
