LABOUR PARTY’S BIRTHDAY

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 199, 20 May 1936, Page 3

LABOUR PARTY’S BIRTHDAY

British Veterans at Dinner THIRTY YEARS OF EFFORT Thirty years ago the Parliamentary Labour Party met for the first time in the House of Commons, and recently the present members attended an informal dinner to celebrate the birthday. The movement was still in its infancy in 1906. and there were but 29 M.P.s present when the party met on February 12. Only two of these pioneers at the recent dinner are still members of the House, and because of the absentees the gathering was a little sad as well ns charming. Four men who did so much to bring about the extraordinary rise of the Labour Party were not present. Keir Hardie, who astonished the House by wearing a cap and who was the most formidable member of the 1906 group, is dead. So, too, is Arthur Henderson, considered by many people to be the ablest political organiser of recent years. And Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Lord Snowden are no longer in the movement. The Old Guard. The two campaigners that are still in the House are Mr. Will Thorne and Mr. J. R. Clynes. In 1906. when the Conservatives lost seats all over the country, Mr. Clynes was returned by a two to one majority for the NorthEast Division of Manchester—a seat which was later altered a little and renamed the Platting Division. It has always been a difficult seat to hold, and indeed in the 1931 election Mr. Clynes was defeated. Mr. Will Thorne was the only man present who has sat in the house without a break. What is the chief difference between the House then and now? The old Liberal Party, which was returned to power in 1906. is dead, or at least is dying, and the Labour Party has taken its place. Mr. Clynes says that, there has also been a great change in the class of question that is asked. Thero are far more questions dealing with the social and industrial life of the community, and the House, he thinks, is no longer an “academic institution.” Tile present Education Bill is a case in point. In 1906 a Bill of this kind; would immediately have raised religions issues, whereas what chiefly interests us now is its effect on the domestic conditions of families. Brilliant Figures. And, of course, many of the figures of the 1906 Parliament have gone. Mr. Clynes vividly remembers Balfour, who he considers was by far the most powerful intellect in the Conservative Partj’ of those days. Balfour, he says, "had n good deal of sympathy with us, and always listened with interest to our early speeches.” Of tiie Liberals. Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith are dead, and Mr. Lloyd George was just being spoken of as one of the rising young men. His recollection of Mr. Churchill is of somebody very alive, very active, very boyish in appearance. Mr. Clynes’s hero was Keir Hardie, with whom he did a great deal of propaganda work in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Keir Hardie, he thinks, was “One of Nature’s first gentlemen,” who brought to politics the religious passion of a missionary. His cap was not in the least a pose, and he did not wear it for purposes of display or because he wanted to bring himself down Io the level of the working class. While ho was a collier he had worn a cap, and he went on wearing one because he had become used to it.