Light on the Labour Leaders
The wail about the attendance of the Labour (!) members upon State occasions being only 29 or 30 instead of 42, was given vent to in the “Labour Leader” of 24th. March last. The advice given to the constituencies to tighten up their representatives is useless in face of the fact that those same Labour members know on which side their bread is buttered, and that they are not representing Labourists in Parliament, but chiefly Liberals. After the confession of the organ of the I.L.P. that they can only command 30 votes (the individual votes varying according to the matter voted upon) we may hope to hear less than hitherto of the boasting of the number of M.P.s the Labour Party control.
Mention has been made of C. Duncan’s vote on the armaments question. No doubt Mr. Duncan voted as he did in order to give value in return for a resolution passed by the Barrow-in-Furness Liberal Association E.C. on January 11, 1910, requesting “all Liberal electors on this occasion to vote for the Labour candidate, Mr. Charles Duncan.”
As to the drivel given forth by the “Labour Leader” (24.3.11) on Mr. Duncan’s case, wherein £8 3s. 9d. is estimated to be the amount per family per annum spent on armaments, this arises from the false conception that out of a bare subsistence wage the worker has something to spare in protecting that country and trade which grind him down. Of course he does not, and cannot, pay for armaments, but if the Labour leaders and their paymasters can only get him to believe that his pocket interest is the same as their own, then they will have made themselves worthy of their hire.
Mr. Duncan on the one hand and the “Labour Leader” and leaders on the other, will be extremely chary of telling the workers the truth, viz., that wages depend fundamentally upon the cost of reproducing the workers’ energies from day to day, and are regulated by the competitions for jobs, and that the difference between high and low taxation, therefore, will be pocketed by the master class.
If the “Labour Leader” scribe is particularly desirous that the Labour men should vote with consistency, he should advocate that before they are returned their constituents should he agreed. While the policy of the Labour candidates remains what it is, namely, to catch votes on any sort of plank, they must necessarily disagree when the time comes to fulfil their pledges. Let them educate their electorate and make them class-conscious before they accept the position of their representatives, and then, when elected, they can act as one man. You have the edifying spectacle of a “practical party” with one half voting one way and the other half voting in the opposite direction, and then we are told that our policy is too slow !
J. R. Macdonald, M.P., speaking at Leicester on April 9, grew eloquent upon the significance of the Labour Party’s work, and said: “The greatest effect of their propaganda had not been to create the I.L.P., but to set men of all parties speaking in Socialist ways and in Socialist directions, so much so … that a Tory member had forestalled the Labour Party by introducing a bill giving railway clerks one day’s rest in seven. Lord Walmer, who beat Mr. Seddon at Newton-le Willows, found that if he would retain his seat he must do some of the work Mr. Seddon would have done.”
Really, these Labour leaders should be careful, for if the trade unionists and workers generally are told that Tories and Liberals will do the work of the Labour Party, they might begin to save the funds now spent in Labour politics to help pay the £8 odd per family the “Labour Leader” tells them will be their share of the cost of armaments.
Mr. J. H. Thomas, Labour M.P. for Derby, has gone too far in the eyes of the “Labour Leader” for being present and speaking at a Liberal function in Derby. But what would our contemporary have ? There is scarce a Labour member whose seat does not depend upon Liberal votes, and is Mr. Thomas to fly in the face of his bread and butter ? The crime he is supposed to have committed is worsened by the fact that it has happened “at a time when the Labour Party is surrounded by censors ever on the look-out for opportunities to belittle the Labour Party’s independence.” “It behoves every member,” the scribe continues, “to emphasise that independence rather than to take any step which may cast the shadow of suspicion or appear in any way to justify carping criticism.” So you see that the offence is not so great in itself as in the time it is done and the being found out. Given no censors, and therefore less likelihood of publicity, the Labour representatives (!) could continue to appear on Liberal platforms as in the past.
As the I.L.P. (which party’s official organ the “Labour Leader” is) claim to be Socialists, what objection can there be to the members of the Labour Party co-operating with the Liberals outside Parliament ? I ask the question in view of the fact that Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald said recently that “it was the duty of Socialists in Parliament to co-operate with non-Socialists.” That is why (I again quote Mr. Macdonald at Burnley, 28.10.10), “the foundations [of Socialism] are being laid, and they were actually realising Socialism to-day.” So you may guess what kind of Socialism it is at which Socialists—save the mark—and non-Socialists co-operate, especially since “the predominant party must and do, three-quarters of the time, force their issues on the Labour Party” (“Labour Leader,” 28.10.10). I suppose the other quarter of the time is spent in adapting measures introduced by the Labour Party which are favourable to the predominant party ?
A similar view to Mr. Macdonald’s, as expressed at Burnley, is held by Mr. J. R. Clynes, M.P., who, speaking at the Beswick Co-operative Hall, Manchester, said: “A man who only sought the success of his own side would never be the individual to bring about a solution of the great social problems with which we are faced to-day.”—(“Manchester Guardian,” Feb. 23, 1911.) An “individual” solving the social problem would be a queer sight.
If the social problem arises from private appropriation of the social products by those few people who possess the means of life of the many, which possession is maintained through political control of the armed forces, then it should be evident to any one that to control the means of life in the interests of the many is the object to be aimed at. The control of the political machinery is the weapon necessary for our object, and to get control of it we must fight the possessing class. The fight between the class possessing and the class requiring the means of life is the class struggle. Anyone conscious of that class struggle will fight for the success of his particular side—either to retain something he has (if he is a capitalist) or to acquire something he has not (if he is a worker); and any trafficking with the enemy is known by the name of treachery.
J. R. Macdonald not only knows, but decides, the policy of the Labour Party, if we may judge from his article headed “The Policy of the Labour Party” in the “Labour Leader,” March 31, 1911. He says: “We are not in that position (of supporting the Government in return for promises obtained), and so long as I remain chairman of the Party we never will be in that position.” And as a result of said position (whatever it may be) “the Labour Party have obtained a great deal. . . . We have got put in the King’s speech promises of two big insurance schemes against unemployment and invalidity, a definite pledge that the Trade Unions shall be freed from the Osborne judgment this year, and payment of members this year.”
“Bate me some and I will pay you some and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.”—SHAKESPEARE.
Speaking at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, Mr. J. Keir Hardie is reported to have said: “They (the capitalist class) blame us for preaching a class war. They practice a class war.”
Those who know anything of Mr. Hardie’s history will realise how grossly unfair is the aspersion, as applied to him, at any rate. For the enlightenment of those who are not conversant with the history of the champion what-d’ye-call-it, I will quote his written word (1904).
“For my own part I have always maintained that to claim for the Socialist movement that it is a ‘class’ war, dependent for its success upon the ‘class’ consciousness of one section of the community, is doing Socialism an injustice and indefinitely postponing its triumph. It is, in fact, lowering it to the level of a faction fight.”
Oh, no, Mr. Hardie is no preacher of the class war. He has, on the contrary, always shown a keen anxiety to hide that little fact. Why ?
ELANDBE