THE COLLEGE AT THE DOCK GATES
Commending himself to his Employers--"Crooks's College"--His Style
of Teaching--Specimens of his Humour--Admonitions against Drink and
Betting.
With regular work well assured, Crooks was able to give more time and
study to public affairs and to the Labour Movement. For an unbroken
period of ten years he held a good position in a large coopering
establishment in East London, where he was held in high esteem by men
and masters alike, the latter more than once intimating to him they
would make it worth his while to remain in their service all his life.
Crooks was always proud of the good standing he held in his employers'
eyes. He knew it was due solely to his skill as a workman, for it
certainly did not tell in his favour that he was beginning to be known
more widely than ever as a Labour agitator. This, as a term of derision,
used to be applied to all Labour leaders in the 'eighties and long
afterwards. Certain writers and speakers who wished to be particularly
derisive would refer to them as paid agitators. Even to this day an
occasional echo of the cry reaches the ears. The offenders belong to the
same school as the lady who withdrew her money from the bank after the
General Election of 1906 because so many Labour members had been
returned.
It was during these years of regular work that Crooks founded his famous
College. He began a series of Sunday morning Labour meetings outside the
East India Dock Gates, which have been continued ever since. The place
in association with these Sunday meetings came to be known among Poplar
workmen as Crooks's College.
Many a useful lesson has he driven home to his working class audiences
at his College at the Dock Gates. He generally leads off with some
little humorous fancy.
"If you fellows only have a quid a week, don't despise your share in the
country's government. You needn't go the length of the Cockney taxpayer
who rowed out to a man-o'-war at Portsmouth.
"'Ship ahoy!' he shouts. 'Ship ahoy!'
"At last he makes someone hear.
"'Is the captain aboard?' says he.
"'What d'yer want with the captain?' asks a bluejacket.
"'Feller,' says the taxpayer, big-like, 'just tell your captain that one
of the owners of this 'ere ship wants to come aboard, and look slippy
about it.'
"The captain invites him on the deck, and he goes round the ship
sniffing at this and complaining about that until the ship's carpenter
gets riled.
"'Don't you know that I have a share in this ship, feller?' says the
taxpayer.
"'Oh, have yer?' says the carpenter, handing him a chip. 'You just take
your share then, and get over the side double quick, or I shall be under
the necessity of showing you the way.'"
When the East End was suffering from one of the water famines that used
to be fairly common before the supply was taken over by a public
authority, he never tired of calling the attention of his Dock Gate
meetings to the fact that the company went on charging the same rates,
whether there was water or not.
"When I got home last night, my wife said, 'Will, the water's come on at
last; but just look at it--it's not fit to drink!' So I went to the tap
and saw a lot of little things swimming about in the water. The wife was
alarmed, and asked what we should do. 'My dear,' I replied, 'for
goodness sake don't say anything about it to anybody. If this gets to
the ears of the company they might charge us for the fish as well as for
the water.'"
Never was instruction at college imparted with so many human touches and
humorous sallies. He noticed that many of the men slunk away when the
public-houses opened. He made it a practice to commence his own address
a few minutes before the public-houses threw open their doors. In this
way he kept most of the men about him. The waverers among them were
shamed into staying by little thrusts like these:--
"Some of you chaps imagine you can only be men by taking the gargle. If
you could see yourselves sometimes after you've been indulging you
would jolly soon change your opinion. Perhaps you've heard of the man
who asked for a ticket at the railway junction.
"'What station?' asked the booking clerk.
"'What stations have you got?' he stammered, clinging to the ledge for
support.
"But even that chap was not so bad as the railway guard who went home a
bit elevated. He saw the cat lying on the hearthrug, and chucked it in
the oven, slamming the door and yelling, 'Take yer seats for
Nottingham.'
"I've heard men say they only take it because the doctor orders it. One
of these chaps was caught having secret nips of whiskey. 'Bless yer
heart!' he says. 'Don't yer know I has ter take it for me health? I
suffers wiv tape worms.'
"One of the chief reasons some of you chaps booze is because you are too
sociable-like in standing treat. A rattling boozer was once screwed up
to the point of signing the pledge. He writes his name, puts his hand in
his pocket, and asks how much?
"'Nothing to pay,' says the young lady, smiling.
"'What? Nothing to pay?' he repeats in amazement. 'Do I get it for
nothing? Do you mean to say that I, a working man, am offered something
for nothing?'
"'Nothing to pay,' repeats the young lady.
"'Well, 'pon my honour, this is the first time I've ever got anything
for nothing. Come and have a drink.'"
"Some of you fellows who live on the Isle of Dogs have seen the
allotment system started there. I asked one of the publicans of the
neighbourhood why he complained about the allotments. 'Why,' said he,
'the men used to come in and have a gargle on Saturday afternoons, but
now they go and dig clay.'
"But ask the men's wives what they say about the allotments, and you
will hear a different story. The men now have time not only to cultivate
their plots, but to look after their families.
"How many of our poor women who give way to drink can trace their
descent to the neglect of the men who married them. It may be hard to be
burdened with a drunken wife, but often enough a good deal of the fault
is on the side of the husband because of his early neglect. He should
have strengthened her. He should have shared her sorrows as well as her
joys. We ought not to leave a woman to bear all her own burdens. Many a
young wife breaks down because of early neglect at a time when she ought
to be built up, when it would be real manliness on the husband's part to
put up with a little trouble for her sake.
"Some of you giggle when you see a man nursing a baby in long clothes.
What is there to giggle at? I carried a baby in long clothes up the
stairs of Shadwell Station the other day, because I saw it was too much
for the poor mother who was struggling along.
"'Here,' I said, 'hand it over; I'm used to that sort of job.'
"My wife heard of it before I got home, and she said to those who told
her, 'Well, if the woman didn't thank him, I shall when he comes home.'
"Perhaps you thought I looked a fool clambering up the stairs with a
baby in long clothes. I don't think so. I satisfied myself by doing what
evidently wanted doing."
He hurried away from his college by the Dock Gates one Sunday morning to
keep an appointment to address the Isle of Dogs Progressive Club. He
found less than a dozen men in the lecture hall, while the bar and the
billiard room were crowded. He walked out without a word and sat down in
the club garden.
"This is all right. I'm enjoying myself perfectly here," he told the
bewildered secretary. "If they prefer to play at billiards and to drink
beer, let them. I am quite content to enjoy this garden."
In ten minutes time not a man remained in the bar or billiard room. The
lecture hall was filled.
"We deserve your reproach, Will," shouted someone from the audience when
at last he stepped on to the platform.
If he was severe on drink he was more severe on betting.
"Many a man here," he told one of his Sunday morning audiences at the
Dock Gates, "can tell me the pedigree of half-a-dozen race-horses. It
shows you can think if you like. But that kind of thinking is what I
call thinking off-side."
Crooks had a hundred happy illustrations for urging upon his
working-class hearers the duty of citizenship and co-operation.
"We chaps are like the old lady's cow that gave a good pail of milk
regular, but often kicked it over. We have built up trade unions and
friendly societies and co-operative societies that stand for the best
working class organisations in the world. But we have a weakness for
kicking the pail over. How? Because we are constantly spoiling our own
good work by allowing other classes to do all the governing of the
country.
"It reminds me of a group of boys I saw coming home from a football
match.
"'How did yer get on?' they were asked by other lads in the street.
"'Won.'
"'How many?'
"'Seven to nothing.'
"'Been playing a blind school?'"
And then Crooks would go on: "Well, we workers have been the blind
school, and we have been allowing other classes to score goals against
us all the time. If we haven't been blind we've certainly been
blindfold. Tear the bandage off your eyes. Be men."
Behind all his banter there was a serious message in all his Sunday
morning addresses.
"Labour may be the new force by which God is going to help forward the
regeneration of the world," he told his hearers. "Heaven knows we need a
little more earnestness in our national life to-day, and if the
best-born cannot give it, the so-called base-born may. We common people
have done it before. Who knows but what it is God's will that we should
do it again? We can all afford to laugh at that dear lady, bless her,
who could not bear the idea that some of the Apostles were fishermen,
and who solemnly asked her minister whether there was not some authority
for believing that they were owners of smacks.
"We working men are gaining power. Let us see that we also gain
knowledge to use the power, not to abuse it. Parliament is supposed to
protect the weak against the strong. It doesn't pan out like that. After
all these years of popular education, isn't it about time we taught the
dialectical champions in the House of Commons that the people are the
creators of Parliament, and that we demand as its creators that
Parliament should be at the service of the people and all the people,
instead of at the service of the powerful and the wealthy?
"But don't think that Parliament and municipality can do everything.
They are not going to make the world perfect. What they can do and what
we should insist on their doing is to make it easier to do right and
more difficult to do wrong. They can deal with those 'who turn aside the
needy from judgment and take away the right of the poor of My people,'
but they cannot make good men and good women. That must depend upon
ourselves."
That College at the Dock Gates can point to some notable achievements.
The Blackwall Tunnel, which has its entrance at the very spot where the
meetings take place, was one of the earliest things the College agitated
for. Between the dock wall and the tunnel is a large municipal gymnasium
and recreation ground, the scheme for which was first unfolded by Crooks
at the College, when the ground was a waste and the children were
without play-places.
Crooks's College began the campaign for a free library. The
well-equipped public library that now stands in the High Street was its
first achievement. The College founded the Poplar Labour League, which
first introduced Crooks to public life. Crooks's College first created
the demand for a technical institute for Poplar. The institute is now an
accomplished fact, comprising the best municipal school of marine
engineering in the country. Crooks's College started the campaign for
the footway tunnel under the Thames between the Isle of Dogs and
Greenwich, which now serves the daily convenience of thousands of
work-people. Crooks's College began that policy of humane treatment of
workhouse inmates which had a great deal to do with improved
administration of the Poor Law all over the country. Crooks's College
was the originator of the farm colony system in this country. Crooks's
College stood out for the welfare of Poor Law children. Crooks's College
broke down the corrupt practices on three of the old municipal
authorities in Poplar.
And perhaps the greatest occasion in the history of the College at the
Dock Gates was that Sunday morning in June, 1906, that followed the
opening of the Local Government Board Inquiry into the administration of
the guardians. For the week previously the Press and the local Municipal
Alliance had done their best to poison the mind of Poplar against its
long-trusted Labour man.
How would the College fare now? The attendance at the Dock Gates that
morning was one of the largest on record. Thousands of ratepayers were
there, and when Crooks walked through their ranks to the little portable
rostrum he had one of the great receptions of his life. He urged them
not to be discouraged because their cause seemed to be under a cloud,
but to strengthen his hands in maintaining the integrity of public life
and to possess themselves in quietness, confident that before long the
accused would become the accusers.