Rays

In “Justice” (2.1.09), Mr. H. M. Hyndman enters his protest against “modesty,” and boastingly gives a list of his aristocratic relations and friends who have had more or less close relations with Indian affairs. The list includes titled hired assassins of every degree, military swashbucklers, capitalist political and literary hacks, Lords and Ladies of English high society, and a few Indian natives who had found favour in the eyes of their country’s enemies—truly a noble and notable gang of associates to boast of while posing as a Socialist,

The writer then proceeds to tell us how clever HE was, how HE had provided a Conservative Government with an Indian policy, which they put into practice, and how he “had been assured that he had rendered a great service to the State,” and had been offered “all that any man could get in this country.”

Doubtless all this is true. In fact, judging by the present painful position in which the Indian people find themselves, we are inclined to believe that some scheme of his has been in operation, and after reading his shameful confessions, we shall view with more suspicion than ever any future proposals emanating either from H. M. Hyndman or that coterie of his disciples who still call themselves “The Social Democratic Party.”

However, not to be eclipsed, but to dim the self-constructed halo round Hyndman’s head, up springs the gentle George Bernard Shaw, to trumpet forth in the columns of the “Observer” (10.1.09) his services, and those of the Fabian Society, to the capitalist class. According to G.B.S. it was the Fabian Society (in other words himself) who supplied the Liberal Party with the Newcastle Programme, which served so well to delude the working class for twenty years ; and when it dawned on those far-seeing and obliging Fabians, that to have a programme without meaning to carry it out meant disaster to their Liberal friends, they prepared the way for a Party (the Liberal Party) without any programme to carry out. Now it is rumoured that the Labour Party require a programme, and again the Fabian Society is at hand. Yet the one and only George need not worry. Those Liberal-Labour lambs won’t do anything rash. They don’t really need a programme. What (from a working-class point of view) they really need is called “cremation.” Nevertheless, George Bernard Shaw is going to Portsmouth to provide the. freaks with more Fabian foolery. ‘Tis a mad vorld, my masters, but it spells tragedy for the toilers.

“Mr. Ben Tillett has fallen foul of the Parliamentary Labour Party (to which he is affiliated and under whose auspices he has agreed to stand for Parliament) and in a pamphlet just issued, charges them with libelling their class in connection with the Licensing discussion, and says that Henderson, Shackleton and Snowden have ‘out-Heroded the worst ranters.’ The present leader of the party, ‘when a Gospel-Temperance-Liberal Election agent, was of little importance,’ whilst Shackleton, ‘as a useful but obscure trade union official, was of little consequence ; now he is the darling of Cabinet Ministers, “hot gospellers,” temperance fanatics and educational endowment thieves,’ and so on and so on.”

Commenting on the above “John Bull” asks (23.1.09) “When Labour men fall out, how are the workers to get their due ?” The answer to this is, of course, by choosing to understand Socialism and trying Socialist delegates instead of “Labour Leaders.” This answer is equally applicable to the question “How are workers to get their due ?” whether the “Labour men” fall out or not. For united or divided they are just as impotent to effect any advancement of the cause of that great working class whom they have they the impudence to claim they represent, while in fact they merely represent its ignorance and credulity.