Purple Proposals

Sage old James Louis Garvin of the famed independent Observer extended helping hands last week to a young wedded couple whom most other British editors were roasting alive: Sir Oswald and Lady Cynthia Mosley, both Socialist M. P.'s, she rich with the millions of her late, great father Marquess Curzon of Kedleston.* "Sir Oswald Mosley has taken his political life in his hands with brilliant fearlessness," wrote Editor Garvin. "He is the only leader of his generation who has the courage to strike out a new path." With 15 fellow M. P.'s including Oliver Baldwin (Socialist son of Conservative Leader Stanley Baldwin), the Mosleys had just signed and published a purple manifesto. Declaring that "world conditions on which our [Britain's] former relative prosperity was based have entirely changed," the 17 rebels appealed for support from all parties, declared that to put the Empire back on its feet, "there should be an Emergency Cabinet of five members without portfolio invested with power to carry through an emergency policy." This policy would be: 1) "Building within the commonwealth a civilization . . . largely insulated from the wrecking forces of the rest of the world," this by means of tariff agreements with the Dominions; 2) protection of the British consumer against increased food and raw material prices by an "Import Control Board"; 3) modernization and re-equipment of British industries under a "National Planning Board"; 4) postponement ("not repudiation") of Britain's War debt payments until the Mosley "reconstruction program" shall have been completed. Obviously the Conservative Sunday Express was justified in splashing out the manifesto under a derisive screamer: If I Were Prime Minister--By Sir Oswald Mosley. But observers noted that numerous features of the "Mosley program" correspond with Liberal Leader David Lloyd George's ideas of how to deal with Britain's economic crisis. Is Sir Oswald a stalking horse for the Welshman? The Mosleys have been loudly describing as "too old," Scot MacDonald, 64, and Stanley Baldwin, 63; but Sir Oswald, 34, declared last week that Mr. Lloyd George, 67, is "the only Wartime leader who is still a dynamic character!"

* A paragon of breeding and good form, he was spared the anguish of hearing his daughter Lady Cynthia brightly inform a London audience last week that she had had no time to write a speech because, "Unfortunately my sister [Lady Alexandra Metcalfe] went and had twins!"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.