In his retrospective account of the Speaker’s Conference, Lowther himself made a revealing admission. He ‘felt very strongly’ that to ‘renew’ the ‘party and domestic polemics’ over the franchise that had wracked the pre-war era, ‘would bring discredit upon Great Britain in the face of her Dominions and colonies, at the very moment when the nation should be occupied in the consideration of large and novel problems . . . As time went on I became more and more impressed with the soundness of this view, and frequently pressed it upon my colleagues when there seemed to be any danger of a
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