BERNARD SHAW'S NEW PARTY.

Grey River Argus, 30 October 1907, Page 4

BERNARD SHAW'S NEW PARTY.

"I now solemnly abandon the Labour party after doing my share of the work of setting it on its feet— or, rather, on its knees— in Parliament." So writes Mr George Bernard Shaw in the "Clarion." ' (C I known What," he goes on, "to get my own class — the disinherited poor relations, and younger sons' progeny of the plutocrats and aristocrats — into Paxliamentt and into poii'tidal array. I want a party of Socialists who have "had enough of "being gentlemen. No common working man need apply; his dissatisfaction with genteel life cannot be sincere, because he has never -tried it. Poor people are always objectionable; and no poor person shall be admitted into my new party unless he can prove that his poverty is his own fault and that his parents were respectable. The children of- atheists, who have never been to church, will be rigidly excluded; but those who were taken, to church regularly every Sunday by th'-ir parents and broke loose later on will be welcome. "All members over thirty must be married, or, at least, domesticated ; bachelors and libertines invariably idealise matrimony, and can .put forward impracticable iplans of education. Drunkards, borrowers, and amateur gamblers r\vall be excluded, not from moral prejudice, but because they are nuisances^nd will find plenty of congenial company in the other parties ; but disinterestedly irregular and in subordinate (persons will be specially welcome, provided they are ladies and gentlemen. Various tests of gentility .will be applied ; for instance candidates will •be asked whether it has ever occurred ; to them to clean their. own boots or go to bed in their day shirts. _An affirmative answer will be a decisive disqualification. The -thing must be kept select at all costs. Keir Hardie obviously the most ingrained gentleman in the House of. Commons, will be admitted on his renouncing labour, and leittier . puiblicly apoSo'gising _ for having worked "as a iboy r iri a mine, " or else confessing that the "story of ; his having done so is as unfounded as it seems improbable but, as a. rule, only Socialits who are renegades from capitalism will .bejolerated." "Professional men and gentlemen, employees will then have a society suited to their position, free from. the •red tape of the trade unions, anS the aspirations of the working man to be ' 'a gentleman in tHe true sense of the" world'— that is, on the cHeap."