THE REVIVAL OF BUMBLEDOM
Crooks's Poor Law Policy Attacked--How a Local Government Board
Inquiry was Conducted--Crooks's Mistake in Remaining Chairman of
the Board of Guardians--The Inspector's Report--Why the Poor Die
rather than go to Poplar Workhouse.
It is easy to understand that the humane spirit Crooks had infused into
Poor Law administration, and the fact of his having made the State
recognise a duty to the unemployed, was not acceptable to the old order
of Poor Law administrators, nor to some of the officials of the Local
Government Board.
When Crooks entered upon Poor Law work he found it bound hand and foot
by red tape. The men elected by the people did not rule at all. They
were little more than the servants of paid officials, whether in the
person of Bumble in the workhouse or of Bumble at the Local Government
Board.
We have seen how he fought against Bumble administration, and how
successive Presidents of the Local Government Board lent him their
support. Mr. Ritchie, at the request of Poplar, reduced the
qualification for Guardians. Sir Henry Fowler abolished it, and, again
at Poplar's request, deprived workhouse masters of the power to refuse
admission to Guardians. Mr. Henry Chaplin ordered "workhouse comforts"
and "adequate out-relief." Mr. Walter Long improved the dietary scale
and formed the Central Unemployed Committee. Mr. Gerald Balfour passed
the Unemployed Act.
All these reforms were more or less unwelcome to Bumbledom. One can
understand how impatiently those who stood for the old harsh order of
things waited for an opportunity to break into revolt. Their opportunity
came in June, 1906, at the Local Government Board Inquiry into Poplar's
Poor Law administration.
Crooks, who was still Chairman, courted the fullest and most open
investigation. Directly he heard that the Poplar Municipal Alliance was
making charges against the Guardians to the Local Government Board, he
appealed for a public Inquiry.
On the opening day of the public Inquiry at Poplar Crooks and his
colleague George Lansbury felt it to be their duty to protest against
its being conducted by an Inspector who, they alleged, had his verdict
in his pocket. They wished to make no reflection upon the Inspector's
personal integrity, but they declared then and afterwards that it
appeared to them to be "quite unjust to appoint so extreme an opponent
of their policy to conduct the inquiry."
For fifteen out of the twenty days that the inquiry lasted the Inspector
allowed the Municipal Alliance practically to direct the proceedings.
They did their best to discredit Crooks's Poor Law policy on account of
the malpractices of some of his colleagues, of which, up to then, owing
to the pressure of his other public duties, he had been ignorant.
The Inspector, whose knowledge might have taught him how far from true
many of the innuendoes were, made no attempt to stop them. He appeared
to think it quite right to allow statements to go forth to the public
that paupers were being fed on all kinds of delicacies, and that
serviettes, pocket handkerchiefs, and outfits for girls going to service
were for the use of the ordinary inmates of the workhouse.
The public did not know at the time that the "Linen Collars for
Workhouse Inmates," blazoned forth in the Press as an example of
Poplar's extravagance, were simply what were supplied to the boys in the
school, that they too, like the girls, might go out into the world no
longer branded, but self-respecting.
All through the Inquiry the public was given to understand that Poplar
was an example of what happens under Labour administration. Since the
two most prominent Guardians, Crooks and Lansbury, were known everywhere
as Labour leaders, the whole Board was wrongly supposed to consist of
their followers. In reality, out of a Board of twenty-four members only
ten were Labour representatives, and not half of these Socialists. The
majority of the Guardians were Conservatives and Liberals.
The policy of Crooks and Lansbury did to a large extent dominate the
Board, due no doubt to their ability and personal magnetism. But
between the _policy_ of these two men and the _administration_ of
certain of their colleagues lay a gulf that neither the Inspector nor
the Press seemed to see at the time. These two were held responsible for
certain faults of administration committed by individual members of the
Board belonging to the Liberal and Conservative parties. They were
actually held up to reproach and ridicule for faults and follies
committed by colleagues who had bitterly opposed their policy at every
step.
The Inquiry taught Crooks his mistake in consenting to remain Chairman
of the Board after his election to Parliament. We have seen that his
consent to remain was given reluctantly, and on the understanding that
he should devote less time to the work. He little thought that some of
those who pressed him to stay would take advantage of his relaxed
attention to bring discredit on the Board's administration. He therefore
seized an early opportunity in the succeeding year of resigning the
office, informing the Board by word of mouth, and the people of Poplar
by circular letter, that in doing so, owing to the press of other public
duties, he did not propose to abandon in the smallest way any part of
that policy of Poor Law reform to which the best years of his public
life had been devoted. He also publicly declared in Poplar repeatedly
that he would do his best to expose and turn out of public life any
person guilty of corruption, and even while the Inquiry was going on he
appealed to the Inspector more than once to order a prosecution of
suspected Guardians and contractors.
After the dust and din caused by the Municipal Alliance had died down,
that body found itself largely discredited in Poplar. One of its members
wrote to the Press:--
Over this Inquiry we have already made many enemies.... It would be
difficult to define what the Alliance set out to do, but the
methods employed in doing it were, to say the least, unworthy....
I did not think, when we embarked on this expensive trip, that we
were going to attempt to cover with ridicule men who, it must be
admitted, have devoted a considerable portion of their time to the
affairs of the Union, and are now proved to have been thoroughly
honest in their policy.
The Alliance was to receive a heavier blow from the Poplar people. To
them an insult to Crooks was an insult to Poplar. The Borough Council
Elections followed soon after the Inquiry, the Alliance throwing all its
weight into the local campaign. In nearly all the other London boroughs
the Progressives and Labour men were badly beaten. In Poplar the Labour
Party went back larger in numbers and backed by a stronger vote of the
electors than they had ever had before. Lansbury defeated the Chairman
of the Alliance.
"That," said Crooks at the time, in an interview in one of the daily
papers, "is the answer of the people of Poplar to the slanders and
misrepresentations levelled against me. The people of Poplar know the
truth about my policy, whatever may have been the shortcomings of some
of my colleagues; the people of London do not know--they only have the
Yellow Press version."
Again, when a few weeks later the triennial election for the London
County Council took place, the people of Poplar stood by their Labour
member. Progressive and Labour seats fell all over London in March,
1907, but Crooks was re-elected for Poplar at the top of the poll with
3,504 votes, though the Alliance strained every nerve to oust him.
Then it was that his outside accusers began to suspect they had been
misled. Here was a prophet in his own country indeed--accused and
slandered outside, but trusted and honoured by his neighbours. And when
a month later the election of Guardians took place, and Poplar, put to a
third test, declared more emphatically than ever for the Crooks policy
by defeating about two-thirds of the Alliance candidates and electing an
increased number of Labour men, the eyes of the public were opened.
But the revival of Bumbledom was not yet at an end. The Local Government
Board Inspector's report came out three and a half months after the
inquiry closed. The unusual course was followed of publishing it before
the evidence. When the evidence did appear it disproved many of the
Inspector's conclusions.
The Inspector was bound to say there was no reflection upon the
"personal integrity of Mr. Crooks and Mr. Lansbury."
While deprecating the standard of comfort in the workhouse, the
Inspector made no reference to the doctor's statement that he did not
think the inmates were too well fed or clad. Rather, he tried to
undermine Crooks's policy by remarks of this kind:--
Mr. Crooks in his evidence admitted that the dietary in the
workhouse was better than could be obtained by the independent
labourer in the borough with a wife and two children to keep who
received anything under 30s. a week.
The evidence gives a different version. What Crooks said (page 389)
was:--
"A man with 30s. a week with a wife and two children can only just keep
himself in decency. When he gets below that he gets below the Local
Government Board diet.... The men in the workhouse get a bare
subsistence, and no man outside ought to be paid wages less than enable
him to get that kind of living. What you have to prove is that we are
giving the people in the workhouse such luxury as a man in ordinary work
at from thirty to forty shillings a week could not get at home. But what
he" [the legal representative of the Municipal Alliance] "does not say
is that we are dealing with the very aged in the workhouse--the
able-bodied, as you know, are exceedingly limited in number--but he does
not appreciate for a moment that after all a man's liberty is worth
something. Liberty has not fallen in value. It is a priceless something.
A man will die for it. And our people will die--a good many of
them--rather than go into the workhouse."
It happened that the people of Poplar were dying for it about that very
time. While the Local Government Board was harassing Crooks for his
efforts to save the poor from starvation, another Department of the
State was in correspondence with the Guardians over two cases of people
who had died from starvation in Poplar. This was the Home Office.
It is a theory of the British Constitution that no person in the kingdom
should die of starvation. Yet in London alone forty-eight people died of
starvation in the winter of 1905-6. Whitechapel, which gives no
out-relief, and is held up as a model by the Inspector who conducted the
Poplar inquiry, had ten deaths from starvation within its borders during
the year. Poplar, where the Guardians are said to be too generous in
their treatment of the poor, was unable, with all its zeal, to prevent
two people dying from want of food.
One of the victims was a child whose father refused to go into Poplar
workhouse--this so-called "palace of luxury"--because he thought he
might still be able to earn a trifle outside. Out-relief in the way of
food was given to the value of 3s. 6d. a week, but that not being enough
for a family of five, the youngest defied the British Constitution by
quietly slipping into the grave--"Died of asthenia and bronchitis," was
the coroner's verdict, "due to mother's want of food, accelerated by
want of proper clothing."
Shortly afterwards a married labourer in Old Ford, faced with
starvation, refused to apply to the Poplar Guardians because it had
become common talk among the poor of the district that the Local
Government Board would no longer allow the Guardians to assist people
outside the workhouse. And one morning this unemployed man had to run to
the nearest doctor's because one of his children was "took queer." What
followed was told by the doctor in evidence a few days later at the
Poplar Coroner's Court. He related how he was knocked up in the early
morning, and how, when he went to the house, he found no sign of food,
no fire, and, lying on some scanty bedding, a girl-child, who had been
dead about an hour. Death, he added, was due to exhaustion from want of
sufficient food. He was so shocked with the poverty of the home that he
gave the parents five shillings out of his own pocket, and sent them
something to eat.