From the Watch-Tower
“Like Mr. Chamberlain, he (Mr. Lloyd George) is essentially a middle-class statesman . . . Wales looks sorrowfully on. He has passed out of its narrow sphere. The Parnell of Wales has become the Chamberlain of England. The vision of the young gladiator fighting the battle of the homeland has faded. … It is proud of its brilliant son—proud of the first Welsh-speaking Minister to enter a British Cabinet, but it waits with a certain gathering gloom for its reward. Is it not thirteen years since he led a revolt against the Liberal Party on Disestablishment, and is he not now a chief in the house of Pharaoh ? Once it has been on the point of revolt; But he had only to appear and it was soothed.”—Daily News, April 11th.
The wirepullers of the capitalist parties are too astute to allow promising leaders of dissatisfied factions within their ranks to remain such. When they cannot cajole them, when they do not find it convenient to throw them a sop in the shape of a so-called reform, they find them a job and use them, whether it be the Lloyd Georges, or the Isaac Mitchells, to bully or to soothe those whom they once led.
It is very sad, but there is some hope, in view of events in the A.S.E., that the working class will shortly throw over these misleaders.
Mr. W. R. Trotter, of the Canadian Trades Congress, writing from Dragon Parade, Harrogate, sends to theYorkshire Post copies of two letters received by him from tbe President of the British Welcome League of Toronto (Mr. A. Chamberlain), and an excerpt from the report of the Municipal Committee of the Toronto District Labour Council bearing on the emigration controversy.
In the first letter, dated February 21, Mr. Chamberlain says labour conditions in Toronto are worse than he has seen them during the 22 years’ residence there, and he asks Mr. Trotter to “tell the workers of the old country to go slow about coming to Canada until those already here can be found something to do. Tell them from me not to listen to agents, or even the Salvation Army, for they would not be in the shipping business if it was not for the dollars they make.”
In the second letter, dated March 6, Mr. Chamberlain says the labour conditions have not changed, and thousands are still out of work. He enforces this statement by mentiong that in reply to a test advertisement inserted in a paper for one day only by the League’s secretary, 1,500 men wrote that they were prepared to go to farms in British Columbia. “My own opinion is,” added Mr. Chamberlain, “that a halt should be made for a while, and an effort made to place the people already here into work before advising others to leave their homes in England to come to Canada.”
The excerpt from the Municipal Committee’s report calls attention to the unemployed problem in Toronto, and says : “Your Committee would further recommend that this Council places itself on record as holding the Manufacturers’ Association and the Salvation Army jointly responsible for much of the unnecessary suffering among the unemployed of the city, many of whom are victims of the misrepresentation of these two organisations.”
We also learn that the “Army” are appealing to the charitably disposed in Canada, to relieve the distress there, meanwhile they are advertising to take emigrants to Canada because of the employment to be there obtained. The same old game. And the “unspeakable Stead” says the head of the Salvation Army, General Booth, is a Socialist! What, has Mr. Stead’s friend, the Czar, done that he should be left out in the cold?
“May I draw the attention of I.L.P. branches to the fact that after 14 years the (Licensing) Bill provides for Local Veto, which has so long been advocated by the I.L.P. ? And may I also urge branches to at once take the matter in hand and follow the example of the Selby I.L.P. in support of this strongly democratic measure.” -W. Farley, Selby I.L.P. in Daily News.
According to the program of the I.L.P. that body “demands” the Municipalisation and public control of the drink traffic, neither of which will be secured by the Government’s Licensing Bill, either now or in fourteen years time. But probably the I.L.P. wire-pullers fear that if they oppose this “strongly democratic measure” they will lose some of the fat jobs they now secure talking twaddle in Nonconformist pulpits.
“Modern industry reckons on a reserve of the partially employed.” Daily News leader, 14/4/08. Winnow a full column of the chaff of capitalist-nonconformity and a two line grain of truth is saved. But this grain of itself damns for evermore the Liberalism the Daily News is concerned to maintain as a dominant factor in the political arena. “The partially employed,” is an endeavour to soften the harshness of the term, “unemployed.” A reserve of unemployed is necessary to modern industry. Liberalism is the political expression of modern industry. Lloyd George, the bright particular star and the fiercest democrat of the present administration, has emphasized this sufficiently. Therefore it follows as the night the day that Liberalism, by standing for modern industry, must stand for the maintenance of the reserve of unemployed upon which modern industry depends. Thus we arrive at the unalterable position of Liberalism upon the question of the unemployed, with which, among other things, the present Government proposes to deal at some time or the other. The value of its proposals in this connection may therefore be very adequately appraised beforehand. They represent the exact equivalent of nothing.
(Socialist Standard, May 1908)