LABOUR IN ENGLAND.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 130, 29 November 1909, Page 2

LABOUR IN ENGLAND.

ADDRESS BY MR. WILL CROOKS. Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., had a busy time of it yesterday evening. He spoke of "Labour and Christianity" to a large congregation at the Vivian-street Baptist Church, and then addressed an audience that filled the whole of the Opera House. Mr. D. M'Laren, M.P., presided, and on the platform with him were several members of" Parliament, local Labour leaders, and others. Mr. Crooks was enthusiastically received, and for over an hour kept his audience in the best of humour with a racy description of the birth" and growth of the Labour Party in the House of Commons. » In passing, he touched on the problems of poverty in the old land. His remarks were illustrated . with much happy anecdote and comment. He showed what unemployment really was in a land like England. '"Nothing goes down so quickly," he said, "as the unemployed man. ' He falls lower and lower in the scale, until it is impossible to raise him up again. Keep a man out of work long enough, and by sheer neglect, by lack of opportunity, you've robbed him of all that made him of vnlue — of his very manhood." The trouble with England was not.freetrade or protection, but the fact that forty million acres were owned by 2500 > people, while thirty-eight million people Owned, no land at all. t j As to the rise of the Labour' Party, ! Mr. Crooks said that at first they had tried petitions, petition after petition, j but nothing came of them, and at last they decided to send petitions to Parliament, not in parchment, but in boots. ' Thus they got their first little band elected, and pushed the Trades Dispute Bill as fa* as its second reading — but no further. As a result of the next elec- , tion the Labour Party in the House of Commons numbered thirty-three members, and things changed. They got their Bill through, and safeguarded the funds of trades unions. Next followed the Miners' Eight Hours Bill, and after that the Unemployment Acr. Then there was the Bill which obliged local authorities to furnish meals to underfed children. They were asked : "Do we not support institutions that aid you? Do we not give you charity?" To which they replied : "We dpn't want your gifts at all; we hate you, and we hate your class." What the workers wanted was not politicians to give them doles, but to be given the opportunity to get their own in their own way. The greatest fight was for the children. " ( Lefc me *yarn you," said the speaker, "as man to man, and as a father and a grandfather, whatever" your suffering and sorrow keep it away from the children. They will have to bear the burden of life soon enough." . So the speaker continued, covering in his address a wide field, touching on his' own district of Poplar and its troubles, on riches and poverty in London, and on the means of reform* His remarks were loudly applauded. On the motion of the chairman, a resolution was carried, conveying hearty greetings to the 'Labour Party oT Great Britain in the struggle in which it is engaged, and trusting that it would win m its defence of the people's rights.