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I President Wilson's Speech.…

I P.R. in Glamorgan. I

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I P.R. in Glamorgan. I WE sincerely trust that the lead which we are able this week to give to the Glamorgan Labour Parties on the question of Proportional Repre- sentation in the unwieldly constituencies of East and West Glamorgan, will result in an active opposition db strenuous and determined that the experimenters will drop all idea of applying the scheme in areas so ill-fitted for its successful manipulation. The careful logic with which Mr. Mardy-Jones has made out his case should carry conviction to even those who have embraced with enthusiasm the idea of Proportional Repre- sent,ation-for, as Mr. Jones points out, it is not that the Democratic forces are apposed to the principle, but, in this instance, we are strenu- ously opposed to its application in areas which become so unwieldly as to reduce the ideal of Represenita-tive Government to a farce. The geographical contour of East and West Glam- organ is such that even the old single and double member constituencies offered consider- able electioneering difficulties; difficulties that are so intensified oy the extension of the areas into the two proposed Proportional Representa- tion constituencnes that they become simply un- workable. It is not so much that we fear that under the scheme Mr. Jones' anticipation that the better type of candidate will Avoid East and West Glamorgan as a plague spOlt-tihough that anticipation is sensible enough—^but what we do regard as a very real danger is the total loss of intimate relationship and semblance of control which each elector ought to feel in his parlia- mentary representative, conjointly with the loss of that sense of responsibility towards a critical electorate which is supposed to debar the steps of the politician when the temptation comes to traverse ways that are new and strange. If the new Franchise Bill is to offer us any real im- provement on the old, then that improvement must express itself in the quickening of the poli- tical consciousness of the electorate, and that quickening can never be real and lasting in huge irresponsible constituencies such as are pro- mised in East and West Glamorgan. The duty of securing a full measure of electoral control over the politician, and of awakening the poli- tical consciousness of the people, without which that control is a sheer impossibility, should be painfully manifest to all who have realised how inefficient has been that control in the past; who have recognised that secret treaties and the still more odious secret diplomacy are the very antithesis of that control. If that control is to come to the people now then the units that con- stitute the La.bour Party must see to it that no obstacles are put in the way of a nearer ap- proach of the people and their representatives; that such remoulding of the machinery as is un- dertaken shall be such as to aid in the task of educating the people politically. The political education of the electorate of East and West Glamorgan as it is proposed to reconstruct them will be a chimera, for, from the very nature of the constituencies, politics would never be more than an abstract philosophy to the unite in such massive aggregates. The task then is to scotch the scheme be fore it has gone too far, and to this end every local Labour Prty, every Social- ist branch, every trade union lodge and branch; aye, and every individual elector ought to pro- test emphatically and immediately against this experiment.

Mr. Hartshorn and the Unofficial…

Clydach Miners' Leader.

Our Easter Conference.