LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS (FREE POSTAGE). (Hansard, 19 April 1939)

§ Mr. Parker

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for certain free postage during local government elections. This is a one-Clause Bill to give certain free postal facilities during local government elections. It proposes to give all nominated candidates for election for county, county borough, borough, or district councils one free postal delivery after their nomination. This is the same privilege which all Members of this House had as Parliamentary candidates at the last General Election. I think there is a very strong case for giving this right which we all possess to candidates for local councils during local council elections. Whenever local elections take place we hear in the Press a chorus of protest about the apathy of electors. It is extraordinarily difficult even in Parliamentary elections to persuade electors to go to hear candidates or their supporters at public meetings. I have estimated in the case of my own constituency that if every meeting which I addressed during the last election had been packed and different people had come to every meeting, I should have addressed about 6 per cent. of my electors. Actually, I expect that I addressed something like 4 per cent. If it is difficult to get people to come to public meetings in Parliamentary elections, when there is the full organisation of political parties at work, it is still more difficult to get people to come to public meetings in local elections. It seems to me that in local elections even more than in national elections it is very important that electors should receive literature telling them what a particular candidate stands for, and the proposal in this Bill is that every candidate should have the right to send to all electors one free postal communication in which he would presumably enclose his election address or something else of that kind.

I think it will be agreed that this proposal will not favour any party or candidate in an election. In my own area I have been approached by candidates of all parties and persons who stand as in- 361 dependents to know whether some Bill on these lines could not be passed by Parliament. In 1918, when universal suffrage first became the law in regard to Parliamentary elections, this House conferred the right of a free postal delivery in those elections. Unfortunately, Members of Parliament did not then take the same interest in local elections as they did in Parliamentary elections. Last year this House gave to candidates in local elections the right to have an extension of hours at the end of the day if they so desired, a right which Parliamentary candidates already had. I now suggest that the House should give to local government candidates during an election the further right which Parliamentary candidates have of one free postal delivery.