Jottings
Summing up in the case of the United County Theatres, Limited v. Musicians’ Union and Bristol Trades Council, Mr. Justice Lawrence described the Trades Disputes Act, 1906, as “the most ill-drawn, inartistic, and ungrammatical Act of Parliament that he had ever come across,” to quote from the contemporary Press. Yes indeed !—and Belfast and other places have proved the futility of this magnum opus of the Labour Party in that peaceful persuasion has so often been made impossible during strikes, while now the unions cannot even issue handbills asking their fellow trade unionists to support them by refusing to deal with blacklisted concerns. Is this Act another specimen of the “adaptability” of the Labour Party ? They seem, in its construction, to have adapted themselves first-rate to the art of drawing up measures that are useless, thus proving their right to equal consideration with the old established parties in the eyes of all respectable people.
But, of course, if they drew up an Act of real worth to the workers, it could not pass into law until such time as they acquired political power, or, at least, were becoming a real menace to the exploiting class.
A. M. Thompson, the Clarion humorist, writing of the Taunton bye-election (Feb. 26th. ’09), alluded to Frank Smith “fighting as an avowed Socialist.” The Labour Party Constitution states that candidates and members must “appear before the constituencies under the title of Labour Candidates only.” Is it merely ignorance or another example of the Thompsonian humour that allows him to mis-state facts for the glory of what he terms Socialism ? Mr. Peel sought the support of Moderate Liberals by labelling Mr. Smith a Socialist, and the Manchester Guardian (Feb. 20th, ’09) said that the latter is doing all that he can to combat Mr. Peel’s assertions.” The Executive of the Labour Party issued a strongly worded appeal to the electors of Taunton to “give Mr. Smith their support.” Hardly Socialist credentials, these !
Mr. Thompson also tells us that Mr. Smith “has polled more votes for Socialism than the Liberal candidate scored in 1900.” Well, Dangle may think so, but when we read that the Liberal candidate at the general election telegraphed to Mr. Smith “Hope Liberals who voted for me in 1906 will support you, who stand firm for social reform, and show their hatred for Tariff Reform, re-action, and the arbitrary power exercised by the unrepresentative and plutocratic second chamber,” and that “Mr. Chiozza Money advised any Liberals who are in doubt to vote for Mr. Smith, who stands for Free Trade and the building of social reform upon the basis of that system” (Manchester Guardian, Feb. 20th, ’09), then, I think, we are justified in assuming that the votes cast for Mr. Smith are not even Labour (!) votes.
Mr. Keir Hardie sent Mr. Smith a prayerful telegram as follows : “May God be good to his own to-day and send you to join us. We need you badly.” I suppose the Labour Party will be known in future as “The Devil’s Own,” since Keir Hardie, as a now avowed believer in God, cannot but think that all that He does is for the best, and He would therefore reward His own in an electoral fight. From which I can only conclude that the Conservative Party is of the elect and the Labour Party of the rejected.
Mr. G. N. Barnes, M.P., in moving—during the debate on the Address—an amendment relative to the unemployment “problem,” said that “the House was on its trial.” I thought its trial was over; that it had been convicted and the “Labour” members found “guilty” as “traitors to their class” by one who now (for a consideration—i.e., a salary) is trying to work the confidence trick a little longer along with those same “traitors to their class.” Sentence remains to be passed upon them by the workers at the next general election. Kismet ! Bismillah ! ‘Tis fate !
The Suffragists had a “Self Denial Week” recently, in order to raise funds for their cause. Like most “denial weeks,” however, the denial portion of the business was done by someone else, and the “selves” received the funds from the weak. They announced that in Manchester their members would act as matchvendors, flower-sellers, confectioners, orange-saleswomen, and organ-grinders. Thus the people who from necessity are compelled to eke out an existence as street vendors will suffer an encroachment upon one week’s pence in order that the Suffragists may gather in the same.
If they retort that the women affected would ultimately benefit by getting the vote, then I quote them Miss C. Pankhurst (June 1908) :
“Our demand is the essentially moderate one that women occupying a position and filling responsibilities equal to those of a man voter shall be placed on the electorate.”
“Many people are still under the impression that we claim the vote for every woman, but this is not the case.”
Let our women readers consider this a little. If the claim is made that the granting of a vote to a section of women would mean the extension of the franchise to all women, they are up against the fact that the partial granting of the franchise to men has not yet led to all men being enfranchised. If the possession of the vote is the solution to the economic evils that beset us to-day, how can it be accounted for that men possessing the vote fight like devils at the dock gates to get a few hours’ work ? If the Suffragists knew cookery the vote might be useful to them, because when ”hubby” came home penniless from his search for work, they could either fry or boil it (the vote) and feed the family on it. No, the cause of our misery as workers lies in the fact that the few monopolise the means of life. Therefore unless our potential voters are brought to an understanding of this our class position, thus coming to realise the necessity of abolishing private ownership in the means of production, we should only make our work harder as Socialist propagandists by increasing the mass of non-class-conscious electors. With a majority of the present electorate understanding the Socialist position, adult suffrage would follow as a matter of course, or Socialism would belie its ideal as administration in the interests of all by all.
The true nature of the present Suffrage agitation is further disclosed in a “special article” by an anonymous contributor in Home Chat, 9.1.09. This lady, who describes herself as a “householder and an income-tax payer,” writing under the title “Why I am a Suffragist,” says in the course of a brief article, “personally I am strongly in favour of giving the vote only to those women who have a property qualification, and so a stake in the State ; but I feel exactly the same concerning manhood suffrage—that is to say, I think the vote is now given to many men who should not have it, because they have no stake in the State.” Yet these people seek the support of our women of the working class, and indeed, with some small measure of success, being aided and abetted in this by the I.L.P., which is, you know, er— “Socialistic.”
W. C. Anderson, Parliamentary Labour candidate for Hyde, addressing a meeting of the Manchester branch of the Civil Service Socialist Society recently, was quite up to the standard one has come to look for in the Labour Party leaders. After quoting statistics to show how the condition of the working class is getting worse, he informed his audience that the “Socialistic legislation was the cause of any improvement.” Wherein the “improvement” arose, and also how the “Socialistic legislation” had come into being with non-Socialists in power, were two points he failed to prove.
“Everything,” the candidate went on to assure his hearers, “was sacrificed to dividend hunters. . . The captains of industry were falling behind in the race” (for dividends). He (Mr. Anderson) supported public ownership as the solution to the poverty problem. I could only gather, therefore, from Mr. Anderson’s statement that public ownership tended to take the place of the captains of industry, that the publicly owned concern had a greater exploiting capacity than a privately owned one, otherwise in a system of production for profit it could not make sufficient headway to leave privately owned ventures, like honesty, “last in the race.”
The intellectual treat continues. “The mass of the workers are landless, labourless, and propertyless in their own country.” How they can be landless and propertyless in their own country I, for one, could not see. Perhaps it was a Scotch joke. After long years of what he calls “Socialistic legislation” we have the above result. Marvellous !
“Pauperism, in short, notwithstanding all that has been done for education, for sanitation, for the improvement of industrial conditions, notwithstanding the slight tendency of money wages to rise and the decided tendency of the cost of living to diminish, is by no means a vanishing evil. It grows it absolute amount, and does not even diminish in proportion to population.” Oh no ! that is not a quotation from a “Labour” M.P.’s speech, but from the Manchester Guardian of Feb. 18th, ’09. Whoever, therefore, claims to have effected some improvement by reform measures like education, sanitation, factory acts, etc., should answer how it acts, and in what the improvement consists of that leads to a growth of pauperism. Since increasing pauperism means that capitalistic exploitation is also on the increase, it remains for Tory, Liberal, or “Labour” men, when speaking of what their respective parties have done, to answer why their vaunted improvements have spelled an increase of pauperism—i.e., official pauperism.
Justice of March 6th, ’09, contained an article by G. Malton Bradford, in which we read “We are out for Socialism.” And yet in the same issue objection is taken to a statement in the “Reformers’ Year Book,” to the effect that the S.D.P. oppose palliatives “on the ground that they are calculated to postpone the Social Revolution.” So, then, a word can now be dispensed with, or one can be used interchangeably with another to express the same meaning. Socialism = palliatives ; palliatives = Socialism. Then the S.P.G.B. is not a Socialist party, as it does not advocate palliatives, and cannot, on the above showing, advocate Socialism if Socialism = palliatives.
Victor Grayson, speaking at Blackburn on Feb. 7th for the S.D.P., thanked that organisation for holding aloft the flag of Socialism and “refusing to change its colour.” Grayson evidently credits the public with worse memories than they really have. If holding the flag of Socialism aloft and unstained be to act as the S.D.P. did at Battersea, Northampton, Burnley, Haggerston and other places I could name, then the S.P.G.B. can plead “not guilty.” We may be told that the actions alluded to were actions of individuals, for which the whole party should not be condemned, but as the actions were taken by them in their capacity as public men, the Party, by condoning and not censuring such actions, stands condemned.
“A party having any regard for its principles should surely look to it that its able men—those, therefore, most powerful for leading—should be straight, even more than the ordinary rank and file and hence, if they go wrong, should be the more inexorably expelled. A party that is worth its salt can always afford to lose a man or two without collapsing, but it cannot always afford to have a powerful leader inside incessantly pulling the wrong way. Here, again, we ask, is the object of the party to hold together for the sake of office, emoluments, or party tranquility, or for the sake of its avowed aims ?”—”Factitous Unity,” E. B. BAX.
Your first about hits the nail on the head, Mr. Bax. The fond hugging by the parent organisation of the many political prodigals and backsliders, habitual deviators from the straight and narrow path of set principles, justifies us in assuming that “party tranquility” is the object of the S.D.P., rather than “its avowed aims.”
Grayson spoke of the “exotics” of Marx and the “ramblings” of Bax in his debate with Joynson-Hicks at Manchester last year. Seeing that Bax supports, and the S.D.P. believes in, the Marxian exotics, I wonder why he should praise them for their rumblings. But perhaps they are going to form a “Ramblers’ Club”—one never knows.
JIM BROUGH