Jottings
Several raffles have lately appeared upon the surface of the hitherto tranquil sea of Lib-Labism. The Labour Party are apparently getting tired of being led by the nose into various positions of ridicule, and are now protesting against the treatment as a poor return lor the support they have so generously given the Liberals.
Up to now they have implicitly believed in the sincerity of the Government, and it is a matter fruitful of consternation to them to suddenly discover that they have been fooled all the time.
The latest sell is the throwing out of the Franchise Bill, upon which the Labour Party built such great hopes, which were so disastrously shattered. Even Keir Hardie felt compelled to chide the Government because it had destroyed his faith in its honest intentions. As he pathetically remarked in the House of Commons : “In common with the women outside, I trusted implicitly in the word of the Prime Minister. I cannot do so now.”
They call it “The Great Betrayal.” Betrayal of what ? The Labour Party ? Rats ! It was a kidding game all through, but the Labour Party could not see it.
Now, it seems, there is to be “no more flirting with Liberalism.” (They admit the connection, you see !) Does this mean that henceforth the Labour Party are going on independent lines ?
Notwithstanding the resolution adopted at the recent conference to the effect that no support be given to other parties under pain of censure, it is difficult to see how they can remain independent in view of their identical interests. Members of the party will support the Liberals in the future as in the past. Naturally they are sore at their continual disappointments. This, however, is not troubling the Government, as, after a little reflection, the Labourites will come to heel. Speeches made by Labour members on Liberal platforms indicate that they are with them in spirit, as well as in policy. The following is characteristic.
In November last Mr. A. Stanley, M.P., speaking at a Liberal meeting, said “he supported the Government because it had done more good work than any previous Government, and he was not prepared to endanger its position so as to put the Tories into office.” (“Daily News,” 16.11.12.) This is precisely the Labour Party’s position. We have continued to point out that the Labour Party, ever since its inception, has been in the House of Commons only on suffrance ; that it depended for its existence upon the goodwill of Liberals. Their interests are bound up indissolubly together, and to attempt to run counter to the Liberals would be to invite disaster and to jeopardise their existence as a party at the first general election. This view is amply borne out by Philip Snowden himself. Speaking at the Caxton Hall on behalf of Proportional Representation (28.1.13) he admitted that “at least five-sixths of the Labour members of the House of Commons held their seats because of the electoral support which has been given by other political parties.” (There are others, then ?) “If the forty Labour members in the House of Commons under our present electoral system bad to faced three-comered contests in the next election, I am perfectly certain that not half a dozen of them would be returned. There is not a constituency in the country where we could return a labour candidate if we had to oppose the combined opposition of the other political parties. We have a system under which the Labour Party represents twenty per cent. of the electorate, and yet it is within the power of our political opponents to prevent that twenty per cent. from getting a single representative in the House of Commons. . . . You now have forty Labour members dependant upon the goodwill and support of other political parties, and they know it. Now I will leave it to you to conceive how that knowledge must affect the action of those members in the House. They cannot be independent. They cannot consider the interests of the labour element of the community only.” (Italics mine.) In other words, it is not a Labour party.
Whilst Snowden may have cleared the air a bit, yet what he has stated is nothing new. We pointed it out years ago. Its only redeeming feature is that they now admit that which they have always strenuously denied—that they do not represent the working class. On their own showing the Labour Party, as representative of Trade Unionism, is untrustworthy ; to the worker seeking political freedom it is a menace.
This admission, coupled with recent events, implies a complete surrender. Their boast of a new determination to pursue an independent policy is not only laughable, it is hypocritical.
The feature that marked the splendid achievement of Captain Scott in reaching the South Pole, was that he blamed his failure to return to safety upon God. From the point of view of science this implies a weakness. It is weak in that, believing in the supernatural, he could not do full justice to that science on whose behalf he was venturing, and in whose conclusions the supernatural has no place. It was weak, also, in that it implied a contradiction. Equipped, as he must have been, with a certain knowledge of geological and meteorological science (which alone is sufficient to explain why scientists reject the theory of an “all wise” Providence) he yet submitted to what was, to him, the most powerful factor of all—supernatural intervention. Which brings us to the question : If Captain Scott and his party had been completely successful, who would have got the credit, God or Scott?
Speaking of religion, one hears from time to time a wail go up from the churches, bemoaning the apathy of the masses of the people to the dope which is so assiduously handed out for their assimilation. The mass of the people have ceased to trouble about the “spirituality and immortality” of the soul. This is causing great concern to the dispensers of the aforesaid commodity. The Bishop of Northampton in his Lenten Pastoral says : “The only topic fit for a Christian pulpit is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, yet it appears to be the one topic that fails to draw. Crowds will gather in so-called ‘places of worship’ to hear the authority of the Bible derided, the leading dogmas of Christianity attacked, the moral law superseded, and its tremendous sanctions called in question : they will encourage by foolish applause political and Socialistic appeals, harangues on the latest craze or the latest scandal, but the unadulterated Gospel leaves them cold and unemotional.”
All of which, indicates the approaching demise of superstitious dogmas. This is due in a great measure to the spread of knowledge of the world in which we live. But especially have the working class become indifferent to religious teaching, because they are more concerned with trying to keep “body and soul” together in their present insecurity of existence, without speculating as to what will be their portion in the dim obscurity of a future state. The workers are beginning to find out that the Church is on the side of those who exploit them, who, in fact, sanction the system wherein the worker is taught “obedience to our civil and ecclesiastical superiors” so as to keep him in a condition of meekness and subjection. As Mr. Frederic Harrison, in his latest book, “The Evolution of Positive Religion,” points out : “The Church as a body, officially, and apart from a few isolated persons, sticks to its masters—the governing majority—and to its “patrons”—the rich owners of livings. There is not, and there never has been in Christendom, a communion which was socially, morally, and politically, so closely identified with the governing classes of the State.”
One does not expect, of course, the Bishop to be acquainted with the teachings of Marx and Engels. He would learn that all our political, moral, religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas have their origin, not in God, but in material conditions. The way in which the various necessities of life are produced determines to a great extent a man’s outlook upon life and his relation to his fellow men. As the modes of production are constantly changing, so are the moral, religious, and ethical ideas of men.
This factor it is which explains the fewer and fewer in the congregations and the increasing poverty of the churches, despite their backing by the moneyed class.
Attempts have been made to coerce the people back to the churches and chapels by the introduction of variety entertainments on a Sunday afternoon—cinematograph displays and even rag-time dances ; but it has had no appreciable effect upon the attendance. To quote from the S.P.G.B. pamphlet “Socialism and Religion” : “Under all its multifarious forms the modern mission of religion is to cloak the hideousness and injustice of social conditions and keep the exploited meek and submissive.”
It is the historic mission of the working class to free itself of wage-slavery and its accompanying superstitions. Socialism is the antidote to religion, and a continued application of its principles upon the understanding of the workers will in time secure, not only freedom from all forms of superstition, but complete possession of the means of life and the consequent disappearance of parasitism, both clerical and secular.
A teacher of English, in order to disprove the charge that high school pupils know little about the really vital things that are going on around them, gave a test in which she asked for definitions of such terms as “tariff,” “reciprocity,” and “the Labour problem.” In the paper of a fifteen-year-old girl she found this : “The Labour problem is how to keep the working class happy without paying them enough to live on.”
TOM SALA