LABOUR'S RICH MEN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVII, Issue 10903, 28 April 1927, Page 3

LABOUR'S RICH MEN.

DUTIES OF WEALTHY SOCIALISTS.

Mr J. R. Clynes, M.P., defended the position of rich men who throw in their lot with the Labour Party, when he presided recently at a concert of massed Labour choirs at the Municipal Hall, Tottenham, London, reports the "Glasgow Herald." Wealthy men who were Socialists, he said, were being reproached by the Tories for not throwing their property overboard. It would be just as reasonable for him to say that no man could be a Christian and live ini an Archbishop's palace on many thousands a year. Some of the best friends of the Labour Party were men of wealth, and many of ifs worst enemies were working men, who did not as yet understand the Party's purpose. Only in one respect had the Labour Party anything to do with class, and that was with regard to undertaking as its first duty the elevation of the working class for the reason that that was the only class in need of it. Socialism was a set of principles for a 1 future economic life. A Socialist could not advance that life by deliberately making himself poor without making other men permanently better off. The duty of a rich Socialist is to make more Socialists and nlot to make a fool of himself by adding one more to the poverty list. Men of all grades and classes might consistently join the Labour Party and pursue thenprivate interests Jike other people, and face no test other than the test of honest conviction. Men who on this subject had written, to the newspapers should give a little of their time to understanding what socialism was. That applied especially to the shopkeeping and the middle class. Their prosperity depended not upon the presence of a small class of excessively rich money spenders, but upon a large class of piosperous wage earners.

The. reconstruction of Madame Tussaud's is now in progress, at a cost of £300,000. It is expected that the exhibition will he open to the public by Christinas, 1927.