SPOKESMAN FOR HUMANITY

Evening Star, Issue 23123, 24 November 1938, Page 21

SPOKESMAN FOR HUMANITY

“ UNCLE GEORGE ” LAHSEURY CRUSADE FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE Mr George Lansbury, one of Britain’s active ponce workers and former leader of the Labour Party, has been visiting European capitals on a peace mission, the latest of several, intended to persuade heads of States to make concessions at a conference now. rather than plunge their peoples into a war that would he far more costly in the end'. You may not agree with George Lanshnry's brand of Socialism. You may scorn his pacifism. But whoever you may be—'lory from Mayfair or proletarian from the Milo End Bond —you will admit that there is nothing amiss with ‘‘Uncle George ” himself, writes “ Argurs,” in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor.’ In default of more decorous terminology to (it the case you might even he tempted to follow the majority and declare that “ he’s a dear.” Such unanimity in endearment has been the lot of strangely few of tlmso pale and preoccupied-looking M.P.s that hover round the lobbies of St. Stephen’s. But with Lansbury there s a touch of something that brings a momentary kinship in the political world. Y'ou understand all about it the moment you catch sight of the burly form and the genial, ruddy, bewhiskered countenance. What you do not understand so easily is that this veteran of 50 years of warfare on the industrial front of London’s poorer districts is to-day assaulting the world with his-pacifist principles with such determination that after preaching them through America and Europe, carrying them to the very inner sanctums of the dictators, he is compelling the world to accept him as a force to bo reckoned with. The zeal of the reformer is not commonly found in a yoke-fellow with the more avuncular qualities that give George Lansbury a special claim on the affections of paliamentarians and public. How does so simple-appearing a man contrive to harbour in Ins capacious bosom two such diverse characters? The best way to answer the question is to talk with the man himself. Ho is an easy landmark to find in St. Stephen’s—looking more like a north-country farmer than a product of overcrowded Bow and Bromley, and with little about him of the grim determination that 80 years ago sent Blacksmith Elihu Burritt tramping America and the world as an apostle of peace. Yes, he’d be glad to have a little talk. He walked across to a bench and sat down with one leg tucked under him. IDEAS RIDICULED. “ You see,” he said, “ my ideas of pacifism—which often don’t seem to find their way into the Press —come in for a good deal of ridicule from people who think that I would renounce all arms and stop at that. Renunciation of war is vital to my policy, but it’s only a part of it. Equally important is the removal of the causes of war by a world economic conference, which would consider the pooling of all non-self-governing and mandated territories under control of a committee responsible to a reformed League. Then I would have League control of all aviation, internationalisation of waterways, and abandonment of all fortified naval and air bases.” Lansbury talked in the quiet tones of one wjio, after all the bulfctings of a career of struggle, 'had complete con-

(idoncc in humanity. As he went on in bis patient way to say that Labour bad none astray in abandoning its stand against rearmament, one felt instinctively that hero, in a rushing world .of machinery, one had at last run into a completely genuine human being. Jt was as if tlic starved humanity of an overwrought world had sprouted and readied its full bloom in this rightly experienced toiler of London’s East Emi. There was no complexity about this veteran, talking quietly about knowing what’s right and taking the quickest road to get there. In such a voice one might talk to a Hitler or a Mussolini, to all America, on to a strolling newspaper man, and the words would be listened to. For—and this is his secret, if secret it is—George Lansbury can only see human beings as human. He is incapable of seeing one man as a pauper, another as a king, another ns a dictator or prime minister, and a group of men as a government. To him they are one and all human beings, with the duties and ideals of a human being to guide them. If a statesman believes that the mantle of power clothes him with a new code of inorality and a new scale of values, Lansbury will pull the mantle oif and talk to its wearer ns a simple human being. •Just as in the old days he gave King Edward Vll. (.then Prince of Wales) a whilf of the brotherhood of man when, the latter having asked him if ho really thought the poor needed underclothes, ho replied bluntly. “ They need them as much as you or I do,” so to-day he walks into the study of a premier, or of President Roosevelt, or Herr Hitler, or Signor Mussolini, and assumes that the basis of conversation is: “ Let’s put all diplomatic palavering aside and talk this question over like two men who want to set it right.” ; NO ONE CAUGHT THE BAIT. He had hoped that out of these talks some one statesman, preferably President Roosevelt, would have volunteered to call that economic conference —the Belgian Van Zeeland was actually sent around to report on prospects for just such a gathering—but no one actually caught at the bait. His handicap with the dictators was not their preconceived notions of national salvation—he had bargained for those—but the necessary intervention of the interpreter. That quiet, trusting voice was half-lost on Herr Hitler when the interpreter was called in.

“I left him,” he writes, “hoping that the next British or American or French Ambassador might perhaps be able to establish himself as a friend and break down the make-believe of diplomacy.” Break down the artificiality of diplomacy and the ambassadors themselves might, lie believes, _ be left to settle the whole situation with complete confidence. Such thoughts as these might have been voiced by almost any American statesman at almost any period of American history. You may be tempted, in hearing some of George Lansbury’s plans for ■ peace, while admitting that he has fine principles, to argue that, in Company with some other proclaimed of lofty ideals, he is something of a daydreamer. To make such an assumption is not to know Lansbury. Lansbury’s whole life lias been among the poor tenements of submerged London. Even when included in the MacDonald Cabinet ns First Commissioner of Works, he did not change his residence. The experience of opening his front door to needy applicants for assistance, strange to most Cabinet Ministers with their bodyguard of butlers, was common enough to Lansbury. For lie knew their needs and their thoughts as no imported parish or settlement worker could. It was he who was largely instrumental in getting the unequal tax burdens of London remedied in the interests of the poor boroughs by a move that forced the Government to act. In 1921, the Board of Guardians of Poplar (Lansbury being one of them) found Poplar’s poor population taxed at around 23s in the pound On assessed property vnlualieoh, while wealthy Westminster, with few poor to attend to, paid only about 10s. WENT TO GAOL IN A BODY. No amount of appeals had brought any improvement, So the guardians decided to refuse payment of the £600,000 or so annual contribution to Central London services and went to gaol for six weeks in a body. Finally, the Government awoke to the need of rushing through a measure remedying the tax inequalities of all the poor boroughs, and the victorious guardians emerged from Brixton and Holloway into the arms of the cheering multitude. Lansbury is anything but a daydreamer. He knew too well what it meant to dockers’ families 20 years ago to strike for and obtain n minimum wage of 12 cents an hour to be on any but a strictly practical" basis. He attempted nothing in the interests of the lean-faced, ill-paid, ill-housed workers of Bow and Bromley, Poplar or Stepney that he did not See his way to bringing into effect. To-day, he sets forth no proposal for settlement in a harassed, fear-ridden world that he does not believe is capable of being put into effect. He brushes aside the diplomatic futility of statecraft and ignores the counsel of most organised religion, for he says it has with few exceptions consistently been on the side of war. He strikes out for simple truth ns between man and man and the simple teachings of the gospels; bases his programme on that and challenges the world in general to raise any valid objections. As to the validity of the arguments, it is not the purpose of this article to pronounce upon it. It is perhaps worth remarking, however, that for the most part political and governmental circles have affected not to take Lansbury seriously enough to reply—a stand which cannot of itself disprove the Lansbury thesis. On the other hand, the Lausbury-Salter tour of America two years ago, the experiences of which lie has incorporated in a recently-issued volume, left no question but that public opinion in the country was something more than interested in what this humble champion of peace had to say.