WHY THE OLD PARTIES WILL NOT DO
The old parties are no use to Labour for two reasons:--
1. Because their interests are mostly opposed to the interests of
Labour.
2. Because such reform as they promise is mostly political, and the
kind of reform needed by Labour is industrial and social reform.
Liberal and Tory politicians call us Socialists _dreamers_. They claim
to be practical men. They say theories are no use, that reform can only
be secured by practical men and practical means, and for practical men
and practical means you must look to the great parties.
Being anxious to catch even the faintest streak of dawn in the dreary
political sky, we _do_ look to the great parties. I have been looking to
them for quite twenty years. And nothing has come of it.
What _can_ come of it? What are the "practical" reforms about which we
hear so much?
Putting the broadest construction upon them, it may be said that the
practical politics of both parties are within the lines of the following
programme:--
1. Manhood Suffrage.
2. Payment of Members of Parliament.
3. Payment of Election Expenses.
4. The Second Ballot.
5. Abolition of Dual Voting.
6. Disestablishment of the Church.
7. Abolition of the House of Lords.
And it is alleged by large numbers of people, all of them, for some
inexplicable reason, proud of their hard common sense, that the passing
of this programme into law would, in some manner yet to be expounded,
make miserable England into merry England, and silence the visionaries
and agitators for ever.
Now, with all deference and in all humility, I say to these practical
politicians that the above programme, if it became law to-morrow, would
not, for any practical purpose, be worth the paper it was printed on.
There are seven items, and not one of them would produce the smallest
effect upon the mass of misery and injustice which is now crushing the
life out of this nation.
No. All those planks are political planks, and they all amount to the
same thing--the shifting of political power from the classes to the
masses. The idea being that when the people have the political power
they will use it to their own advantage.
A false idea. The people would not know _how_ to use the power, and if
they did know how to use it, it by no means follows that they would use
it.
Some of the _real_ evils of the time, the real causes of England's
distress, are:--
1. The unjust monopoly of the land.
2. The unjust extortion of interest.
3. The universal system of suicidal competition.
4. The baseness of popular ideals.
5. The disorganisation of the forces for the production of wealth.
6. The unjust distribution of wealth.
7. The confusions and contradictions of the moral ethics of the
nation, with resultant unjust laws and unfair conditions of life.
There I will stop. Against the seven remedies I will put seven evils,
and I say that not one of the remedies can cure any one of the evils.
The seven remedies will give increased political power to the people.
So. But, assuming that political power is the one thing needful, I say
the people have it now.
Supposing the masses in Manchester were determined to return to
Parliament ten working men. They have an immense preponderance of votes.
They could carry the day at every poll? But _do_ they? If not, why not?
Then, as to expenses. Assuming the cost to be L200 a member, that would
make a gross sum of L2000 for ten members, which sum would not amount to
quite fivepence a head for 100,000 voters. But do voters find this
money? If not, why not?
Then, as to maintenance. Allowing each member L200 a year, that would
mean another fivepence a year for the 100,000 men. So that it is not too
much to say that, without passing one of the Acts in the seven-branched
programme, the workers of Manchester could, at a cost of less than one
penny a month per man, return and maintain ten working men Members of
Parliament?
Now, my practical friends, how many working-class members sit for
Manchester to-day?
And if the people, having so much power now, make no use of it, why are
we to assume that all they need is a little more power to make them
healthy, and wealthy, and wise?
But allow me to offer a still more striking example--the example of
America.
In the first place, I assume that in America the electoral power of the
people is much greater than it is here. I will give one or two examples.
In America, I understand, they have:--
1. No Established Church.
2. No House of Lords.
3. Members of the Legislature are paid.
4. The people have Universal Suffrage.
There are four out of the seven branches of the practical politicians'
programme in actual existence. For the other three--
The Abolition of Dual Voting; The Payment of Election Expenses; and
The Second Ballot--
I cannot answer; but these do not seem to have done quite as much for
France as our practical men expect them to do for England.
Very well, America has nearly all that our practical politicians promise
us. Is America, therefore, so much better off as to justify us in
accepting the seven-branched programme as salvation?
Some years ago I read a book called _How the Other Half Lives_, written
by an American citizen, and dealing with the conditions of the poor in
New York.
We should probably be justified in assuming that just as London is a
somewhat intensified epitome of England, so is New York of America; but
we will not assume that much. We will look at this book together, and we
will select a few facts as to the state of the people in New York, and
then I will ask you to consider this proposition:--
1. That in New York the people already enjoy all the advantages of
practical politics, as understood in England.
2. That, nevertheless, New York is a more miserable and vicious city
than London.
3. That this seems to me to indicate that practical politics are
hopeless, and that practical politicians are--not quite so wise as they
imagine.
About thirty years ago there was a committee appointed in New York to
investigate the "great increase in crime." The Secretary of the New York
Prison Association, giving evidence, said:--
Eighty per cent. at least of the crimes against property and against
the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost
connection with home life or never had any, or whose homes have
ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford
what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and
family.
The younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the worst
tenement-house districts.
These tenements, it seems, are slums. Of the evil of these places, of
the miseries of them, we shall hear more presently. Our author, Mr.
Jacob A. Riis, asserts again and again that the slums make the disease,
the crime, and the wretchedness of New York:--
In the tenements all the influences make for evil, because they are
the hot-beds that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries
of pauperism and crime, that fill our gaols and police-courts; that
throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island
asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out, in the last
eight years, a round half-million of beggars to prey upon our
charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps,
with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the
family life with moral contagion.
Well, that is what the American writer thinks of the tenement
system--of the New York slums.
_Now_ comes the important question, What is the extent of these slums?
And on this point Mr. Riis declares more than once that the extent is
enormous:--
To-day (1891) three-fourths of New York's people live in the
tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the
cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them.
Where are the tenements of to-day? Say, rather, where are they not?
In fifty years they have crept up from the Fourth Ward Slums and the
Fifth Points, the whole length of the island, and have polluted the
annexed district to the Westchester line. Crowding all the lower
wards, where business leaves a foot of ground unclaimed; strung
along both rivers, like ball and chain tied to the foot of every
street, and filling up Harlem with their restless, pent-up
multitudes, they hold within their clutch the wealth and business of
New York--hold them at their mercy, in the day of mob-rule and
wrath.
So much, then, for the extent of these slums. Now for the nature of
them. A New York doctor said of some of them--
If we could see the air breathed by these poor creatures in their
tenements, it would show itself to be fouler than the mud of the
gutters.
And Mr. Riis goes on to tell of the police finding 101 adults and 91
children in one Crosby Street House, 150 "lodgers" sleeping "on filthy
floors in two buildings."
But the most striking illustration I can give you of the state of the
working-class dwellings in New York is by placing side by side the
figures of the population per acre in the slums of New York and
Manchester.
The Manchester slums are bad--disgracefully, sinfully bad--and the
overcrowding is terrible. But referring to the figures I took from
various official documents when I was writing on the Manchester slums a
few years ago, I find the worst cases of overcrowding to be:--
District. Pop. per Acre.
Ancoats No. 3 256
Deansgate No. 2 266
London Road No. 3 267
Hulme No. 3 270
St. George's No. 6 274
These are the worst cases from some of the worst English slums. Now let
us look at the figures for New York--
DENSITY OF POPULATION PER ACRE IN 1890
Tenth Ward 522
Eleventh Ward 386
Thirteenth Ward 428
The population of these three wards in the same year was over 179,000.
The population of New York in 1890 was 1,513,501. In 1888 there were in
New York 1,093,701 persons living in tenement houses.
Then, in 1889, there died in New York hospitals 6102; in lunatic
asylums, 448; while the number of pauper funerals was 3815.
In 1890 there were in New York 37,316 tenements, with a gross population
of 1,250,000.
These things are facts, and our practical politicians love facts.
But these are not all the facts. No. In this book about New York I find
careful plans and drawings of the slums, and I can assure you we have
nothing so horrible in all England. Nor do the revelations of Mr. Riis
stop there. We have full details of the sweating shops, the men and
women crowded together in filthy and noisome dens, working at starvation
prices, from morning until late on in the night, "until brain and muscle
break down together." We have pictures of the beggars, the tramps, the
seamstresses, the unemployed, the thieves, the desperadoes, the lost
women, the street arabs, the vile drinking and opium dens, and we have
facts and figures to prove that this great capital of the great Republic
is growing worse; and all this, my practical friends, in spite of the
fact that in America they have
Manhood Suffrage;
Payment of Members;
No House of Peers;
No State Church; and
Free Education;
which is more than our most advanced politicians claim as the full
extent to which England can be taken by means of practical politics--as
understood by the two great parties.
Now, I want to know, and I shall be glad if some practical friend will
tell me, whether a programme of practical politics which leaves the
metropolis of a free and democratic nation a nest of poverty, commercial
slavery, vice, crime, insanity, and disease, is likely to make the
English people healthy, and wealthy, and wise? And I ask you to consider
whether this seven-branched programme is worth fighting for, if it is to
result in a density of slum population nearly twice as great as that of
the worst districts of the worst slums of Manchester?
It seems to me, as an unpractical man, that a practical programme which
results in 522 persons to the acre, 18 hours a day for bread and butter,
and nearly 4000 pauper funerals a year in one city, is a programme which
only _very_ practical men would be fools enough to fight for.
At anyrate, I for one will have nothing to say to such a despicable
sham. A programme which does not touch the sweater nor the slum; which
does not hinder the system of fraud and murder called free competition;
which does not give back to the English people their own country or
their own earnings, may be good enough for politicians, but it is no use
to men and women.
No, my lads, there is no system of economics, politics, or ethics
whereby it shall be made just or expedient to take that which you have
not earned, or to take that which another man has earned; there can be
no health, no hope in a nation where everyone is trying to get more than
he has earned, and is hocussing his conscience with platitudes about
God's Providence having endowed men with different degrees of intellect
and virtue.
How many years is it since the Newcastle programme was issued? What did
it _promise_ that the poor workers of America and France have not
already obtained? What good would it do you if you got it? _And when do
you think you are likely to get it?_ Is it any nearer now than it was
seven years ago? Will it be any nearer ten years hence than it is now if
you wait for the practical politicians of the old parties to give it to
you?
One of the great stumbling-blocks in the way of all progress for Labour
is the lingering belief of the working man in the Liberal Party.
In the past the Liberals were regarded as the party of progress. They
won many fiscal and political reforms for the people. And now, when they
will not, or cannot, go any farther, their leaders talk about
"ingratitude" if the worker is advised to leave them and form a Labour
Party.
But when John Bright refused to go any farther, when he refused to go as
far as Home Rule, did the Liberal Party think of gratitude to one of
their greatest men? No. They dropped John Bright, and they blamed _him_
because he had halted.
They why should they demand that you shall stay with them out of
gratitude now they have halted?
The Liberal Party claim to be the workers' friends. What have they done
for him during the last ten years? What are they willing to do for him
now, or when they get office?
Here is a quotation from a speech made some years ago by Sir William
Harcourt--
An attempt is being sedulously made to identify the Liberal
Government and the Liberal Party with dreamers of dreams, with wild,
anarchical ideas, and anti-social projects. Gentlemen, I say, if I
have a right to speak on behalf of the Liberal Party, that we have
no sympathy with these mischief-makers at all. The Liberal Party has
no share in them; their policy is a constructive policy; they have
no revolutionary schemes either in politics, in society, or in
trade.
You may say that is old. Try this new one. It is from the lips of Mr.
Harmsworth, the "official Liberal candidate" at the last by-election in
North-East Lanark--
My own opinion is that a _modus vivendi_ should be arrived at
between the official Liberal Party and such Labour organisations as
desire parliamentary representation, provided, of course, that they
are not _tainted with Socialist doctrines_. It should not be
difficult to come to something like an amicable settlement. I must
say that it came upon me with something of a shock to find that
amongst those who sent messages to the Socialist candidate wishing
success to him in his propaganda were two Members of Parliament who
profess allegiance to the Liberal Party.
Provided, "of course," that _they are not tainted with Socialist
doctrines_. With Socialist doctrines Sir William Harcourt and Mr.
Harmsworth will have no dealings.
Now, if you read what I have written in this book you will see that
there is no possible reform that can do the workers any real or lasting
good unless that reform is _tainted with Socialist doctrines_.
Only legislation of a socialistic nature can benefit the working class.
And that kind of legislation the Liberals will not touch.
It is true there are some individual members amongst the Radicals who
are prepared to go a good way with the Socialists. But what can they do?
In the House they must obey the Party Whip, and the Party Whip never
cracks for socialistic measures.
I wonder how many Labour seats have been lost through Home Rule. Time
after time good Labour candidates have been defeated because Liberal
working men feared to lose a Home Rule vote in the House.
And what has Labour got from the Home Rule Liberals it has elected?
And where is Home Rule to-day?
Let me give you a typical case. A Liberal Unionist lost his seat. He at
once became a Home Ruler, and was adopted as Liberal candidate to stand
against a Labour candidate and against a Tory. The Labour candidate was
a Home Ruler, and had been a Home Ruler when the Liberal candidate was a
Unionist.
But the Liberal working men would not vote for the Labour man. Why?
Because they were afraid he would not get in. If he did not get in the
Tory would get in, and the Home Rule vote would be one less in the
House.
They voted for the Liberal, and he was returned. That is ten years ago.
What good has that M.P. done for Home Rule, and what has he done for
Labour?
The Labour man could have done no more for Home Rule, but he would have
worked hard for Labour, and no Party Whip would have checked him.
Well, during those ten years it is not too much to say that fifty Labour
candidates have been sacrificed in the same way to Home Rule.
In ten years those men would have done good service. _And they were all
Home Rulers._
Such is the wisdom of the working men who cling to the tails of the
Liberal Party.
Return a hundred Labour men to the House of Commons, and the Liberal
Party will be stronger than if a hundred Liberals were sent in their
place, for there is not a sound plank in the Liberal programme which the
Labour M.P. would wish removed.
But do you doubt for a moment that the presence in the House of a
hundred Labour members would do no more for Labour than the presence in
their stead of a hundred Liberals? A working man must be very dull if he
believes that.
That is my case against the old parties. I could say no more if I tried.
If you want to benefit your own class, if you want to hasten reform, if
you want to frighten the Tories and wake up the Liberals, put your hands
in your pockets, find a _farthing a week_ for election and for
parliamentary expenses, send a hundred Labour men to the House, and
watch the effects. I think you will be more than satisfied. And _that_
is what _I_ call "practical politics."
Finally, to end as I began, if self-interest is the strongest motive in
human nature, the man who wants his own advantage secured will be wise
to attend to it himself.
The Liberal Party may be a better party than the Tory Party, but the
_best_ party for Labour is a _Labour_ Party.