Lord Oliver’s speech

WHEN we move from the passages which were a sort of preamble to Lord Oliver’s speech in the House of Lords to its operative part, the part in which he dealt with the only issue he and the Government of which he was the spokesman had before them, we find that we have left the statesman far behind and are face to face with the typical bureaucrat. There is no lack of profession of sympathy and goodwill for India or for the cause of Home Rule, but there is no attempt either to understand India’s point of view or do justice to it. This particular part of the speech might, indeed, have been composed for his lordship at Delhi or in London itself by one of those members of the Secretary of State’s Council who represent the one unchangeable thing in a world which is constantly moving forward. It was Sir Malcolm Hailey and those of his way of thinking, in fact, who were speaking through the mouth of his lordship and not the man who wrote or spoke any of the passages to which we referred yesterday. This is precisely what the Daily Herald meant when it said that “there was next to no difference between the Labour Government and any other.” The keynote of this part of the speech is, in the first place, a determination not to move forward beyond the lines indicated by Sir Hailey; secondly, a practical refusal to appoint either a Round Table Conference or a Royal Commission for the purpose of determining the lines of speedy advance to the accepted goal; and thirdly, an anxiety to utilise the “disposition towards effectual consultation” which the Swarajists are supposed to have manifested for the Government’s own purpose and not for the purpose of the Swarajists themselves or of their country.

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