Majesty's Government will claim their right and use their power to
present the Liberal case as a whole to the judgment of the whole body
of electors. That case is already largely developed. How utterly have
all those predictions been falsified that a Liberal Government would
be incapable of the successful conduct of Imperial affairs! Whether
you look at our position in Europe, or at the difficult conduct of
Indian administration, or the relations which have been preserved, and
in some cases restored, with our self-governing Colonies, the policy
of the Government has been attended with so much success that it has
not only commanded the approval of impartial persons, but has silenced
political criticism itself.
It was in South Africa that we were most of all opposed and most of
all distrusted, and by a singular inversion it is in South Africa that
the most brilliant and memorable results have been achieved. Indeed, I
think that the gift of the Transvaal and Orange River Constitutions
and the great settlement resulting therefrom will be by itself as a
single event sufficient to vindicate in the eyes of future generations
the administration of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and to dignify his
memory in Parliaments and periods which we shall not see. But our work
abroad is not yet completed, has not yet come to its full fruition. If
we should continue, as I expect we shall, to direct public affairs for
the full five years which are the normal and the healthy period of
British Administrations, we may look for a further advance and
improvement in all the great external spheres of Imperial policy. We
may look in India for a greater sense of confidence and solidarity
between the people and the Government. We shall salute the sunrise of
South Africa united under the British Crown. And in Europe I trust
that Sir Edward Grey will have crowned his work at the Foreign Office
by establishing a better and kindlier feeling between the British and
the German peoples. That will be the record of policy beyond the seas
on which we shall appeal for judgment and for justice.
If it be said that, contrary to general expectation, our policy has
prospered better abroad than at home, you have not far to look for
the reason. Abroad we have enjoyed full responsibility, a free hand,
and fair-play; at home we have had a divided authority, a fettered
hand, and the reverse of fair-play. We have been hampered and we have
been harassed. We have done much; we could have done much more.
Our policy at home is less complete and less matured than it is
abroad. But it so happens that many of the most important steps which
we should now take, are of such a character that the House of Lords
will either not be able or will not be anxious to obstruct them, and
could not do so except by courting altogether novel dangers. The
social field lies open. There is no great country where the
organisation of industrial conditions more urgently demands attention.
Wherever the reformer casts his eyes he is confronted with a mass of
largely preventable and even curable suffering. The fortunate people
in Britain are more happy than any other equally numerous class have
been in the whole history of the world. I believe the left-out
millions are more miserable. Our vanguard enjoys all the delights of
all the ages. Our rearguard straggles out into conditions which are
crueller than barbarism. The unemployed artisan, the casual labourer,
and the casual labourer's wife and children, the sweated worker, the
infirm worker, the worker's widow, the under-fed child, the untrained,
undisciplined, and exploited boy labourer--it is upon these subjects
that our minds should dwell in the early days of 1909.
The Liberal Party has always known the joy which comes from serving
great causes. It must also cherish the joy which comes from making
good arrangements. We shall be all the stronger in the day of battle
if we can show that we have neglected no practicable measure by which
these evils can be diminished, and can prove by fact and not by words
that, while we strive for civil and religious equality, we also labour
to build up--so far as social machinery can avail--tolerable basic
conditions for our fellow-countrymen. There lies the march, and those
who valiantly pursue it need never fear to lose their hold upon the
heart of Britain.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] In the interval between this and the preceding speech the House of
Lords had rejected the Licensing Bill.
THE APPROACHING CONFLICT
NOTTINGHAM, _January 30, 1909_
(From _The Manchester Guardian_, by permission of the Editor.)
We are met together at a time when great exertions and a high
constancy are required from all who cherish and sustain the Liberal
cause. Difficulties surround us and dangers threaten from this side
and from that. You know the position which has been created by the
action of the House of Lords. Two great political Parties divide all
England between them in their conflicts. Now it is discovered that one
of these Parties possesses an unfair weapon--that one of these
Parties, after it is beaten at an election, after it is deprived of
the support and confidence of the country, after it is destitute of a
majority in the representative Assembly, when it sits in the shades of
Opposition without responsibility, or representative authority, under
the frown, so to speak, of the Constitution, nevertheless possesses a
weapon, an instrument, a tool, a utensil--call it what you will--with
which it can harass, vex, impede, affront, humiliate, and finally
destroy the most serious labours of the other. When it is realised
that the Party which possesses this prodigious and unfair advantage is
in the main the Party of the rich against the poor, of the classes and
their dependants against the masses, of the lucky, the wealthy, the
happy, and the strong against the left-out and the shut-out millions
of the weak and poor, you will see how serious the constitutional
situation has become.
A period of supreme effort lies before you. The election with which
this Parliament will close, and towards which we are moving, is one
which is different in notable features from any other which we have
known. Looking back over the politics of the last thirty years, we
hardly ever see a Conservative Opposition approaching an election
without a programme, on paper at any rate, of social and democratic
reform. There was Lord Beaconsfield with his policy of "health and the
laws of health." There was the Tory democracy of Lord Randolph
Churchill in 1885 and 1886, with large, far-reaching plans of Liberal
and democratic reform, of a generous policy to Ireland, of
retrenchment and reduction of expenditure upon naval and military
armaments--all promises to the people, and for the sake of which he
resigned rather than play them false. Then you have the elections of
1892 and 1895. In each the Conservative Party, whether in office or
opposition, was, under the powerful influence of Mr. Chamberlain,
committed to most extensive social programmes, of what we should call
Liberal and Radical reforms, like the Workmen's Compensation Act and
Old-Age Pensions, part of which were carried out by them and part by
others.
But what social legislation, what plans of reform do the Conservative
Party offer now to the working people of England if they will return
them to power? I have studied very carefully the speeches of their
leaders--if you can call them leaders--and I have failed to discover a
single plan of social reform or reconstruction. Upon the grim and
sombre problems of the Poor Law they have no policy whatever. Upon
unemployment no policy whatever; for the evils of intemperance no
policy whatever, except to make sure of the public-house vote; upon
the question of the land, monopolised as it is in the hands of so
few, denied to so many, no policy whatever; for the distresses of
Ireland, for the relations between the Irish and British peoples, no
policy whatever unless it be coercion. In other directions where they
have a policy, it is worse than no policy. For Scotland the Lords'
veto, for Wales a Church repugnant to the conscience of the
overwhelming majority of the Welsh people, crammed down their throats
at their own expense.
Yet we are told they are confident of victory, they are persuaded that
the country has already forgotten the follies and even the crimes of
the late Administration, and that the general contempt and disgust in
which they were dismissed from power has already passed away. They are
already busy making their Cabinet, who is to be put in and, what is
not less important, who is to be put out. Lists of selection and lists
of proscription are being framed. The two factions into which they are
divided, the Balfourites and the tariff reformers, are each acutely
conscious of one another's infirmities, and, through their respective
organs, they have succeeded in proving to their apparent satisfaction
what most of us have known, and some of us have said for a long time
past, that they are an uncommonly poor lot all round.
It would be bad enough if a Party so destitute, according to its own
statement, of political merit were to return with the intention of
doing nothing but repeating and renewing our experiences under Mr.
Balfour's late Administration, of dragging through empty sessions, of
sneering at every philanthropic enthusiasm, of flinging a sop from
time to time to the brewers or the parsons or the landed classes. But
those would not be the consequences which would follow from the Tory
triumph. Consequences far more grave, immeasurably more disastrous,
would follow. We are not offered an alternative policy of progress, we
are not confronted even with a policy of standstill, we are confronted
with an organised policy of constructive reaction. We are to march
back into those shades from which we had hoped British civilisation
and British science had finally emerged.
If the Conservative Party win the election they have made it perfectly
clear that it is their intention to impose a complete protective
tariff, and to raise the money for ambitious armaments and colonial
projects by taxing the poor. They have declared, with a frankness
which is, at any rate, remarkable, that they will immediately proceed
to put a tax on bread, a tax on meat, a tax on timber, and an
innumerable schedule of taxes on all manufactured articles imported
into the United Kingdom; that is to say, that they will take by all
these taxes a large sum of money from the pockets of the wage-earners,
by making them pay more for the food they eat, the houses they live
in, and the comforts and conveniences which they require in their
homes, and that a great part of this large sum of money will be
divided between the landlords and the manufacturers in the shape of
increased profits; and even that part of it which does reach the
Exchequer is to be given back to these same classes in the shape of
reductions in income-tax and in direct taxation. If you face the
policy with which we are now threatened by the Conservative Party
fairly and searchingly, you will see that it is nothing less than a
deliberate attempt on the part of important sections of the propertied
classes to transfer their existing burdens to the shoulders of the
masses of the people, and to gain greater profits for the investment
of their capital by charging higher prices.
It is very natural that a Party nourishing such designs should be
apprehensive of criticism and of opposition; but I must say I have
never heard of a Party which was in such a jumpy, nervous state as our
opponents are at this present time. If one is led in the course of a
speech, as I sometimes am, to speak a little firmly and bluntly about
the Conservative tariff reformers, they become almost speechless with
indignation. They are always in a state of incipient political
apoplexy, while as for the so-called Liberal Unionists, whenever they
are criticised, they never leave off whining and say that it is
unchivalrous to attack them while Mr. Chamberlain is disabled. Sorry I
am that he is out of the battle, not only on personal, but on public
grounds. His fiercest opponents would welcome his re-entry into the
political arena, if only for the fact that we should then have a man
to deal with, and some one whose statement of the case for his side
would be clear and bold, whose speeches would be worth reading and
worth answering, instead of the melancholy marionettes whom the
wire-pullers of the Tariff Reform League are accustomed to exhibit on
provincial platforms. But I hope you will not let these pretexts or
complaints move you or prevent you from calling a spade a spade, a tax
a tax, a protective tariff a gigantic dodge to cheat the poor, or the
Liberal Unionist party the most illiberal thing on record.
But if the tariff reformers are so touchy and intolerant that they
resent the slightest attack or criticism from their opponents as if it
were sacrilege, that is nothing to the fury which they exhibit when
any of their friends on the Conservative side begin to ask a few
questions. One would have thought at least that matters of such
gravity and such novelty should be considered fairly on their merits.
But what does Mr. Austen Chamberlain say? He tells us that no
hesitation will be tolerated from Unionist Members of Parliament in
regard to any tariff reform proposals which may in a future Parliament
be submitted--by whoever may be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. No
hesitation will be tolerated. Not opposition, not criticism, not
dissent, but no hesitation will be tolerated. The members of the
Unionist Party are to go to the next Parliament, not as honest
gentlemen, free to use their minds and intelligences. They are to go
as the pledged, tied-up delegates of a caucus, forced to swallow
without hesitation details of a tariff which they have not even seen;
denied the right which every self-respecting man should claim, to give
their vote on grand and cardinal issues according to their faith and
their conscience. And in order that those who would refuse to be bound
by these dishonouring conditions may be smelt out and excluded from
the House of Commons, a secret society of nameless but probably
interested busybodies is hard at work in all the dirtiest sewers of
political intrigue.
But, after all, these methods are an inseparable part of the process
of carrying a protectionist tariff. The whole question resolves itself
into a matter of "business is business," and the predatory interests
which have banded themselves together to finance and organise the
tariff campaign cannot be expected to put up with the conscientious
scruples and reasonable hesitations of Members of Parliament. It will
be a cash transaction throughout, with large profits and quick
delivery. Every little would-be monopolist in the country is going to
have his own association to run his own particular trade. Every
constituency will be forced to join in the scramble, and to secure
special favours at the expense of the commonwealth for its special
branches of industry. All the elections of the future will turn on
tariffs. Why, you can see the thing beginning already. That egregious
Tariff Commission have been dividing all the loot among themselves
before the battle has been won--dividing the lion's skin while the
beast lives--and I was reading only the other day that the
Conservatives of Norwood have decided that they could not support
their Member any longer, because, forsooth, he would not pledge
himself to vote for a special tax on foreign imported chairs and
window panes. It is the same in every country.
Such is the great conspiracy with which the British democracy is now
confronted--an attempt to place the main burden of taxation upon the
shoulders of wage-earners and not on income-drawers, a disastrous blow
at the prosperity, the freedom, the flexibility, and the expansive
power of British industry, and a deadly injury to the purity of
English public life. The Conservative Party tell us that if they win
the victory they will screw a protective tariff on our necks. What do
we say? What of the House of Lords? We say that if we win, we will
smash to pieces the veto of the House of Lords. If we should obtain a
majority at the next election--and I have good hopes that if we act
with wisdom and with union, and, above all, with courage, we shall
undoubtedly obtain an effective majority--the prize we shall claim
will be a final change in the relations of the two Houses of
Parliament, of such a character as to enable the House of Commons to
make its will supreme within the lifetime of a single Parliament; and
except upon that basis, or for the express purpose of effecting that
change, we will not accept any responsibility for the conduct of
affairs.
But there is another issue which must not be overlooked. I mean the
social issue. We have taken a great step already. I must say that he
is rather a sour kind of man who can find nothing to notice in the
Old-Age Pensions Act except its little flaws and petty defects. I
think you will feel, on the contrary, that the establishment of the
pensions system is a marvellous and impressive example of the power
which British Governments possess. Without a hitch, perfectly
smoothly, punctual to the minute, regular as clockwork, nearly
600,000 aged persons are being paid their pensions every week. That is
a wonderful and beneficent achievement, a good job well worth some
risk and sweat to finish. Nearly eight millions of money are being
sent circulating through unusual channels, long frozen by poverty,
circulating in the homes of the poor, flowing through the little shops
which cater to their needs, cementing again family unions which harsh
fate was tearing asunder, uniting the wife to the husband, and the
parent to the children. No; in spite of Socialistic sneer and Tory
jeer and glorious beer, and all the rest of it, I say it is a noble
and inspiring event, for which this Parliament will be justly honoured
by generations unborn. I said just now that a Tory tariff victory
meant marching backwards, but there are some things they cannot undo.
We may be driven from power. We may desire to be released from
responsibility. Much of our work may be cut short, much may be
overturned. But there are some things which Tory reaction will not
dare to touch, and, like the settlement and reconciliation of South
Africa, so the Old-Age Pensions Act will live and grow and ripen as
the years roll by, far beyond the reach of Party warfare and far
above the changing moods of faction.
There are many political injustices in this country and many absurd,
oppressive, or obsolete practices. But the main aspirations of the
British people are at this present time social rather than political.
They see around them on every side, and almost every day, spectacles
of confusion and misery which they cannot reconcile with any
conception of humanity or justice. They see that there are in the
modern state a score of misfortunes that can happen to a man without
his being in fault in any way, and without his being able to guard
against them in any way. They see, on the other hand, the mighty power
of science, backed by wealth and power, to introduce order, to provide
safeguards, to prevent accidents, or at least to mitigate their
consequences. They know that this country is the richest in the world;
and in my sincere judgment the British democracy will not give their
hearts to any Party that is not able and willing to set up that
larger, fuller, more elaborate, more thorough social organisation,
without which our country and its people will inevitably sink through
sorrow to disaster and our name and fame fade upon the pages of
history.
We have done some of that work, and we are going to do more. In moving
forward to this great struggle which is approaching, we are going to
carry our social policy along with us. We are not going to fight alone
upon the political and constitutional issue, nor alone upon the
defence of free trade. We are going, fearless of the consequences,
confident of our faith, to place before the nation a wide,
comprehensive, interdependent scheme of social organisation--to place
it before the people not merely in the speeches or placards of a Party
programme, but by a massive series of legislative proposals and
administrative acts. If we are interrupted or impeded in our march,
the nation will know how to deal with those who stand in the path of
vital and necessary reforms. And I am confident that in the day of
battle the victory will be to the earnest and to the persevering; and
then again will be heard the doleful wail of Tory rout and ruin, and
the loud and resounding acclamations with which the triumphant armies
of democracy will march once again into the central place of power.
THE SECOND READING OF THE ANTI-SWEATING BILL[14]
HOUSE OF COMMONS, _April 28, 1909_
It is a serious national evil that any class of his Majesty's subjects
should receive in return for their utmost exertions less than a living
wage.
It was formerly supposed that the workings of the laws of supply and
demand would in the regular and natural course of events, and by a
steady progression, eliminate that evil, and achieve adequate minimum
standards. Modern opinion has found it necessary greatly to refine
upon these broad generalisations of the truth, and the first clear
division that we make to-day in questions of wages, is that between a
healthy and unhealthy condition of bargaining.
Where, as in the great staple trades of this country, you have
powerful organisations on both sides, with responsible leaders able
to bind their constituents to their decisions, conjoined with
automatic scales, or arbitration or conciliation in case of a
deadlock, there you have a healthy condition of bargaining, which
increases the competitive power of the industry, which continually
weaves more closely together the fortunes of Capital and Labour, and
which enforces a constant progression in the standards of living and
of productive power. But where, as in what we call "Sweated trades,"
you have no organisation at all on either side, no parity of
bargaining between employers and employed, where the good employer is
continually undercut by the bad, and the bad again by the worse; where
the worker whose whole livelihood depends on the trade is undercut by
the worker to whom it is only a second string; where the feebleness
and ignorance of the workers and their isolation from each other
render them an easy prey to the tyranny of bad masters, and middlemen
one step above them upon the lowest rungs of the ladder, and
themselves held in the grip of the same relentless forces--there you
have a condition not of progress but of progressive degeneration. And
just as in the former case the upward tendency will be constant if it
is not interrupted by external power, so in the latter case the
demoralisation will continue in a squalid welter for periods which are
quite indefinite so far as our brief lives are concerned.
We have seen from the investigations of the last twenty years, when
the phenomena of sweating have been under close and scientific review,
that there is no power of self-cure within the area of the evil. We
have seen that while the general advance in the standards of work and
wages has on the whole been constant, these morbid and diseased
patches, which we call the Sweated Trades, have not shared in that
improvement, but have remained in a state of chronic depression and
degeneration. The same shocking facts, in some cases the same pitiful
witnesses, were brought before the Select Committee last year as
before Lord Dunraven's Committee in 1888. Indeed I am advised that in
some respects wages and conditions are worse than they were twenty
years ago. Nor are these melancholy facts confined to any one country.
Sweating is not a peculiarity of Great Britain. Practically the same
trades experience the same evils in all other industrial countries.
France, Germany, Austria, and America reproduce with great exactness
under similar economic conditions the same social evils, and in those
countries, as in ours, Sweated Industries--by which I mean trades
where there is no organisation, where wages are exceptionally low, and
conditions subversive of physical health and moral welfare--cast dark
shadows in what is, upon the whole, the growing and broadening light
of civilisation.