The Indian debate

THE debate on the Indian Office Estimates in the House of Commons was chiefly notable for Col Wedgwood’s declaration that the Labour Party’s main object was to secure for India democratic self-government, not because they believed that India had been badly governed in the past, but because in their opinion no human advance could ever be made on a durable basis except through freedom and self-respect. He said their aim was not good government but self-government, because they believed that no man had yet been born good enough to govern another. Such a declaration on the part of one of the most distinguished members of the Labour Party, made in the presence, and without any expression of dissent on the part, of its accredited leader, was undoubtedly of some value, after the recent insulting, insolent and offensive speeches by the Tory Secretary of State, in which the very foundation of India’s claim was denied. Nor did some of the other spokesmen of the party fail to sound a note calculated, after the recent happenings, to give some little comfort to India, not because it gave anything of substance to this country, but because it showed that there was at least one important party in British politics which did not see eye to eye with Lord Birkenhead and his kind regarding the policy that England should follow in India. Ernest Thurtle, for instance, described Lord Birkenhead as “reactionary, headstrong and anti-democratic,” and expressed the opinion that “the death of CR Das had changed the intentions of the Government with regard to the offer of self-government to India.”