To Be Continued

No eyebrows were raised, either in surprise or indignation, when the tired, lightweight 1935-elected House of Commons almost unanimously voted to postpone Britain's general election for another year.* No one except bumptious Independent Bill Brown compared Parliament to the Reichstag, or intimated that this might be a signpost on the road to British fascism.

The British people recognized the legitimate obstacles in the way of radically altering the democratic body elected to represent them, which many felt represented them no longer. For a general election, there was no complete register of voters: voters had been called up, industrially shifted and concentrated, evacuated, blitzed out of old addresses. Most new voters had never been registered at all. An election would divert precious energy from the war effort, create bitterness which might destroy national unity. It would not solve Britain's standing political dilemma, succinctly expressed by the sober weekly Economist:

"There are two statements about the present condition of British politics which would be almost universally recognized to be true. One is that neither of the two large parties evokes the slightest enthusiasm in the ranks of the people. The other is that these two parties are so firmly in command of the machinery of politics that there is no prospect for a long time of dislodging either or both of them."

*Parliament had ample precedent. In Britain the frequency of elections is set not by the Constitution but by law. This was the third one-year extension vote since World War II began. In the World War I period, the House of Commons had repealed the statute giving it a five-year maximum life, had voted itself in continuous office from 1910 to 1918. An Act of Commons extending its own duration is the only one still subject to absolute veto in the Lords.

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