THE QUEEN INTERVENES
A Breakdown from Overwork--Health Permanently Impaired--Appointment
of a Royal Commission on the Poor Law--Saving the Unemployed
Bill--Need of Money to Work the Bill--Mrs. Crooks heads the Women's
March to Whitehall--Mr. Balfour's Sympathetic but Unsatisfactory
Reply--Queen Alexandra's Intervention--A Vote of Money in the New
Parliament.
The labour and anxiety, the long arduous days and the sleepless nights
Crooks endured that winter for the unemployed, culminated in a sudden
and serious illness.
The attack was short, but dangerous. His doctor reported that unless a
change took place within a few hours it would be a case for confinement
to bed for at least three months. Fortunately, the welcome change came.
A few days before he took to his bed he got a severe shaking by a fall
while jumping off a 'bus in the Strand. That was not the cause of his
illness, however. The real cause, as his medical man declared, was
nervous breakdown due to overwork. His overwork had all been in the
direction of trying to get work for the unemployed.
He fretted himself into a worse condition during the first few days of
his illness. Every night, instead of sleeping, he was mentally putting
hosts of unemployed men to work.
The sympathy and affection shown during his illness by his neighbours at
Poplar affected him deeply. All day long callers of all sorts and
conditions were making inquiries and leaving messages of good-will.
Labourers, mechanics, widows, children, tradesmen, public men,
officials, Free Church ministers, Anglican clergymen, Roman Catholic
priests, and Sisters of the Poor were among those who came to the door
once the news leaked out that the man from their midst, whom they had so
often delighted to honour, lay sick and in danger. Their sympathy was
intensified by the knowledge that Mrs. Crooks herself had not wholly
recovered from a serious operation that had kept her for weeks in
hospital.
That breakdown shattered him for life. He has never been the same in
health since, and knows he can never be the same again. Sometimes for
weeks together he endures agonising nervous pains, deprived of sleep and
rest, yet all the time steadily refusing to slacken his labours for
those whom he is fond of calling "the people at our end of the town."
As soon as he was able to get out again in the New Year (1905), he took
up the case for the unemployed, if not with all his former zeal,
certainly with all the zeal he could then command.
Towards the end of January he had so far recovered as to be able to
attend the Liverpool Conference of the Labour Representation Committee.
He was then in a position to make public for the first time that the
King's Speech at the opening of Parliament in the following month would
in all likelihood promise an Unemployed Bill. On his motion the
Conference decided:
That the policy of the Labour Party in Parliament relating to
unemployment should be to secure fuller powers for the local
authorities to acquire and use land, to re-organise the local
administrative machinery for dealing with poverty and unemployment,
to bring pressure on the Government to put the recommendations of
the Afforestation Committee into effect, to undertake forthwith,
through the Board of Trade, the reclamation of foreshores, and to
create a Labour Ministry.
His forecast of the King's Speech proved correct. An Unemployed Bill was
promised. It was introduced on April 18th by Mr. Gerald Balfour, who had
succeeded Mr. Long at the Local Government Board. The Bill confirmed Mr.
Long's scheme of Distress Committees in London, and provided for the
formation of similar bodies in provincial towns. It granted the
principle of State aid by permitting the cost of organisation, including
the provision of farm colonies, to be charged to the rates, leaving it
to voluntary subscriptions to provide a fund for paying the men's wages.
That Session was made memorable to Crooks in another sense. A Royal
Commission on the Poor Law was appointed, and although it was little
faith he had in Commissions generally, he believed that, whatever came
of the recommendations of this one, it would help the people of England
to see, while its investigations were going on, something of the cruelty
and folly of a system which had been ruthlessly thrust upon the voteless
labouring people by the middle class individualists who came into power
after the Reform Act of 1832. His fellow Guardian, George Lansbury, was
appointed a member of the Commission--a notable compliment to Poplar,
which for a dozen years had striven to make this soulless system humane
and helpful.
Although the Unemployed Bill passed second reading with a majority of
217, the Session dragged wearily on with little prospect of its getting
through the Committee stage and becoming law. When August dawned and the
House found itself within a week of adjournment, everyone but Crooks
despaired of getting the measure through. The Prime Minister told the
House there was no time for the Bill. Several of Crooks's Labour
colleagues declared the Bill to be too meagre a thing to fight for.
"I admit its faults and shortcomings as readily as anyone," he argued
with his Party; "but it contains the germ of a great principle--State
recognition of the need and State aid in carrying out the organisation."
Almost alone he fought for the Bill in the last days of the Session. He
urged the Government to save the unemployed from foolish and useless
rioting by holding out to them the hope which the passing of the Bill
would convey.
By a dramatic coincidence, on the very afternoon he was thus warning
the Government the police were charging a crowd of desperate unemployed
in Manchester.
"The Prime Minister urges the plea that there is no time," Crooks went
on to tell the House. "What would the business men of this House think,
when they went down to their offices to-morrow, if they were told by the
manager that grouse-shooting would begin on the Twelfth and that
therefore business would have to be suspended? Does the Government
prefer grouse-shooting to finding work for honest men? Was this Bill of
theirs only introduced to kill time--to wait until the birds were big
enough to be shot? I don't want to stop your holidays. Go and kill your
grouse and your partridges. But are you going to put dead birds before
living men?
"There was the day on which the Eton and Harrow match was played. What
will the unemployed say when they hear that the Government could not
find time to discuss this Bill because Ministers wished to see two
schools play cricket? Do you think the working man gets a day off to see
his sons play cricket in the public parks? Unlike many hon. members of
this House, workmen do not live by dividends. They have nothing to sell
but their labour. When out of work a little help often saves them from
ruin and pauperism. They are only asking to be given an opportunity to
fulfil the Divine curse by earning their living in the sweat of their
brow."
His appeal went home. The following day the Government sprang a
surprise on the House. The Bill would be taken that week. It was passed
within a few days. "H. W. M.," in his parliamentary sketch in the _Daily
News_ of August 5th, referring to what he called "the strange story of
the passing of the Unemployed Bill," said:
At the end of last week its chances seemed to have disappeared.
To-day it has passed Committee, and Monday will see it through the
Commons. The Member chiefly responsible for this issue is Mr.
Crooks, who has shown undoubted subtleness as a Parliamentary
tactician.
In his final speech on the Bill, Crooks argued that even the loafer
would become a better man by being given, not the charity that
demoralised, but a day's work for a day's pay. Such a man, by being put
on a farm colony for a few months, would be turned into a good citizen.
He stood for discipline in Labour as the Government stood for discipline
in the Army and Navy. He wanted to preserve the manhood of the nation
rather than to see it degraded, as it was by the present system of
despising an unemployed man. The type of men who hung idle about all our
large towns was the type that filled the workhouses and prisons. Take
them in their early stages of unemployment, put them under proper
discipline on the land, and he was prepared to prophesy they would
become useful citizens. It was a loss to the nation that men and women
should be going about without the common necessaries owing to being out
of work.
So the Bill went through, and people of all classes agree with his old
friend, Mr. A. F. Hills, a large employer, who wrote to him a letter on
the subject, ending with the words: "I believe that generations yet
unborn will in the years to come rise up and call you blessed."
In the opinion of many people well able to gauge the distress and
discontent of the country, the Act came just in time to prevent serious
disorders in the large towns. For the winter that immediately followed
found the unemployed in a worse plight than ever.
Promptly the Distress Committees formed under the Act got to work. The
London Committees found themselves at first stranded for funds. The weak
point in the Act was that which allowed only the expense of organisation
to be made a public charge. The Committees found themselves asking, What
was the use of organising work for the unemployed when there were no
means of paying wages? It looked as though public subscriptions were not
to be forthcoming. Was the Act, so hardly won, to fail on its first
trial?
Again Poplar fought the cause of the poor for the whole country. This
time the workless men's wives took action. The women of Poplar met in
the Town Hall, Mrs. Crooks in the chair, with the object of urging
Parliament to vote money to the Distress Committees set up under the new
Act.
Mrs. Crooks, as reported in the _Times_, said:
They were endeavouring to enlist the help and sympathy of those in
high places to give some little time to the consideration of the
claims of the wives and children of men who were willing to work,
but who were unable to find the wherewithal to feed those near and
dear to them. The Queen had more than once shown her desire to
help. Was it, then, too much to expect that their wealthy sisters
would use their influence with their all-too-powerful husbands to
appeal, with the women of Poplar, to the King and Government to
call Parliament together with a view to passing estimates to enable
work to be undertaken--work that would give them their daily bread?
Theirs was a cry for national defence, and Parliament must see to
it.
The meeting decided to petition the King to instruct the Prime Minister
to call Parliament together. In acknowledging a vote of thanks to his
wife for taking the chair, Crooks said the mothers and sisters had
remained too long indoors, suffering in silence. If the King could see
that meeting it would make him realise what unemployment meant to the
wives and mothers of his industrial army, and he would no doubt do
something to ensure that they should not lack the sustenance needed to
bring up strong daughters and strong sons as faithful and loyal
citizens. They had got the machinery, and they had got certain powers,
but they needed funds. They had got an organisation that could gather up
all the information as to useful work that needed doing--work that would
be profitable and inspiring to the men who did it, instead of being
degrading, like the foolish and useless and expensive task-work which
was all the Poor Law had to offer.
[Illustration: MR. & MRS. WILL CROOKS
_Photo: G. Dendry._]
About a month later took place the memorable women's march to Whitehall.
The day, November 6th, was truly a tragic and historic one in the
social life of London.
Headed by Mrs. Crooks and the then Mayoress of Poplar (Mrs. Dalton),
some six thousand poor women gathered on the Thames Embankment, near
Charing Cross Bridge, and marched to the offices of the Local Government
Board in order to back up their appeal to the Premier to aid their
out-of-work husbands and brothers. The women came not only from Poplar,
where the march had been organised by George Lansbury, but from
Edmonton, Paddington, West Ham, Woolwich, and Southwark. Some carried
infants in arms; others had children dragging at their skirts.
"Work for our men--Bread for our children." So ran the appeal on the
banner that floated above the Southwark contingent, led by Mrs. Herbert
Stead.
The Embankment was deep in mud, and, as the women trudged bravely
through it--those carrying babies unable to save their skirts from
dragging in the road--the scene was one that filled you with an
indignant shame. Even those other women in motors and carriages, who had
driven down to see the sight out of curiosity, sank back into their
cushions aghast, sickened, ashamed at this spectacle of their sisters'
plight.
In Whitehall the processionists told off a dozen of their number to form
the deputation to Mr. Balfour. The women were accompanied into the Local
Government Board offices by Crooks and Lansbury and two or three other
men from the Central Workers' Unemployed Committee.
The object of the visit was explained by Lansbury, and then a working
woman from Poplar read the women's memorial. The memorial spoke of the
misery, degradation, and desperation of the women which had driven them
to determine to bear their lot in silence no longer. They thought that
Parliament should make it impossible for unscrupulous employers to grind
the faces of the poor. The Government had gone to the aid of the
tenantry of Ireland. The plight of the poor in London was worse. If war
were threatened, ways would be found for raising money. The country was
faced with a worse evil than war in the presence of starving citizens.
In the name of their country, their homes, and their children, they
appealed to the Prime Minister not to send them empty away.
Several of the workless men's wives who, it had been arranged, should
speak broke down; so Mrs. Crooks explained they had not come to utter
words only; they had come as Englishwomen, driven to despair, in the
hope that the Premier, as the chief Minister of the King, would no
longer leave them in a worse condition than that of his dogs and horses.
Mr. Balfour was sympathetic, but had nothing to suggest. He saw no hope
of Parliament voting money. The deputation came away sullen and
disappointed. For the time it looked as though the women's march had
been in vain. But, before a week passed, another woman spoke. The need
was met by Queen Alexandra. On November 13th her Majesty issued her
famous appeal:
"I appeal to all charitably disposed people in the Empire, both men and
women, to assist me in alleviating the suffering of the poor starving
unemployed during this winter. For this purpose I head the list with
£2,000."
Before the winter was over the public, in response to this appeal,
subscribed £150,000--a sum that proved sufficient that winter to keep
Distress Committees going in London and elsewhere during the time of
greatest privation.
The needs of the next winter were provided for by the State. The new
Liberal Government had not been in office many months before it voted
£200,000 to the Distress Committees appointed under the Unemployed Act.
Poplar had done its work. The women had marched to victory.