Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1922. HENDERSON—LABOURITE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLII, Issue 9473, 4 March 1922, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1922. HENDERSON—LABOURITE

Tennyson’s moral of the babbling brook applies equally as well to politicians as to any other class and is illustrated by the case of Mr. Arthur Henderson, the well-known British Labour Leader. Although Mr. Henderson was reported some time ago to be busily engaged in building up a new party organisation, current events indicate that he is now somewhat in the backwash of militant labour and that other leaders have arisen and taken the place he once occupied in the British labour world A comfortable man is Mr. Henderson. , He belongs to the “aristocracy of labour.” He has worked with his hands—he was apprenticed as a moulder on Tyneside—but it was a long time ago. He got into Parliament nearly 20 years ago, winning Barnard Castle in a threecornered contest. Since then he has been at the very heart of the Parliamentary Labour movement. He has found time, too, for civic activities; he has never ceased to be a local preacher of Wesleyan persuasions, and at Bands of Hope, Pleasant Sunday Afternoons, and the like he is an honoured figure. All this experience has given him a gift of pontifical speech, a considerable knowledge of many things, a practical faculty in public business. One thing stands to the credit of Mr. Henderson. When. war broke out he drew apart from the Keir Hardies and the Bam say MacDonalds. A pacifist by nature and habit, he threw himself energetically into war work and the value of his influence in those early days can hardly be over-stated. Mr. Henderson, who is a Privy Councillor, and has therefore the right to be styled the Et. Hon. Arthur Henderson, was the first Labour representative to occupy a seat in the British Cabinet, having joined the Coalition Government m May, 1915. In 1917 he went to Ilussia as the official representative of the British Government, sent out by a Cabinet quite undecided, so it is said, whether to welcome or reprobate the revolution. It is related that amid the whirlpool of conflicting tendencies he found in Bussia, he was misled and he misled Mr. Lloyd George when he returned. A

Minister can hardly be retained in a Cabinet which decisively rejects his views on a vital question. The manner of Mr. Henderson’s going',, however, was open to much criticism and was resented by thousands who had little sympathy with Mr. HenderI son’s personal views. The question a't this time, in view of the attempt that labour will make at the next general election in Britain to capture seats in the House of Commons, is, what is to become of Mr. Henderson? He has had a large opportunity, but it is seldom that one of his type successfully guides any great movement. Small respectability is at a disadvantage in appealing to the masses in times of great exaltation and great crisis. Creat popular leaders generally come from above or from the very depths. To quote B. 1. Raymond in “TTncensored Celebrities ” “Mr. ; Arthur Henderson belongs rather to the grocer scheme of things” m national affairs. His abilities and virtues are all on the back-parlour scale, i He is shrewd in a way, and by no means deficient in judgment. He is ambitious and aspiring, and unresting mediocrity sometimes wins the race against great talent. But we judge that the present emergency demands a verj extraordinary man and Mr. Henderson is among the ordinary. As leader of labour he is not comparable with Mr J. R. Clynes, to whom we referred in a previous political pen portrait.