THE LABOUR PARTY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 133, 12 June 1909, Page 6

THE LABOUR PARTY.

MR. KEIR HARDIE EXPLAINS HIS POSITION. NO SPLIT IN THE I.L.P. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 30th April. Mr. J. Keir Hardie, Ml. P., was the chief speaker at a Socialist demonstration held at Hammersmith on Sunday evening. He said that nowadays the Labour Party is accepted as a matter of course by Liberals and Tories. "The point I wish to make," he said, "is : You may criticise the I.L.P. and its methods, you may disagree profoundly with its tactics, but you cannot deny its success. We have accomplished half the work— and the mofet difficult half of the work — we set out to accomplish, namely to unite the working classes, to take them from the Liberals and from the Tories, and to unite them under their own flag, to work out their own salvation. The Labour Party to-day is a thing to be respected, because it is a thing- to be feared. 1 know it is fashionable in some quarters to seek to belittle the strength and the influence of the party, but it you want testimony of its strength go to the Anti- Socialist League. MORE TIME FOR PROPAGANDA WORK. "This is the first opportunity T have had of speaking in public since the I.L.P. conference at> Edinburgh. I want to assure my comrades and friends that, while I have resigned from my official position in the I.L»P., I hays resigned nothing else. There is too much of my life in the old I.L.P. for me to give it up lightly. I am not of the official type, for one thing, and am very glad, therefore, to be free. "So far as the propaganda work is concerned, so far as furthering the party is concerned, the only difference it will make will be that I shall have more time for the platform than I have had in the past. There is going to be no split in the 1.L.P." (Cheers.) Sir. Keir Hardie quoted from Mr. Blatchford's writings in the current number of The Clarion. In one of those extracts Mr. Blatchford said : "The comparative failure of tho Labour representatives in the House of Commons is due to the fact that they are working men. . . With one or two natural aristocrats to lead them all would be well." Stand or fall, Mr. Hardie stood by his own class to lead their own movement. "If they had a Socialist party in the House of Commons to-day, with Hyndman at its head, they would be beating a tin can at the tail of the jingo procession, calling out for war with Germany and universal military training. Those who want Socialism have one clear duty before them — the strength of the Labour Party for all their work."'