Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1909 — ENGLAND'S ELECTION MANNERS [ARTICLE]

ENGLAND'S ELECTION MANNERS

The Speaker la Aware He Is Subject Interruption. If American is the paradise,' England is the purgatory, of the political speaker, says a writer in Harper’s Weekly. He is very far from being allowed in England to have things all his own way. It is an unwritten law of the country that he is liable to contradiction. Any man in the audience may get up and dispute any statement he pleases, and the orator is not allowed to disregard the interruption, .but has to stop and argue the matter out with his adversary. The heckler has a recognized standing, and all Englishmen are hecklers, and especially all English working men. In a company of six you have only, to show an American that five are against him to convince him that he is wrong. Thau is just wnen-an English workingman would become finally convinced that he waq the only sane person in the room. If you ever watched an English workingman heckling Mr. Balfour on the subject of Chinese labor, you have yet to learn qf what a political meeting is capable. These contests are followed by the audience with supreme zest and good humor. If they threaten ti become too protracted, the interrupter is pulled down in his seat by willing hands from behind, or simply thrown out of the hall. In a political campaign for the first time in the ir story of English electioneering, some ladies had to be forcibly removed from s meeting. They were earnest woman’t suffragists, and-as the speaker of th< occasion, who was no less than Si.j Henry Campbell-Bannerman, woulc not stop to pay any attention to them tney proceeded to K oist a banner (up side down, as it happened), and to ad 'dress the audience in competition with the Prime Minister. After five min u.tes. of uproarious confusion, the police and some of the officia’s of th] meeting gently but very firmly hal, carried and half pushed them out o. the hall.