RISE OF LABOUR PARTY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19124, 19 March 1924, Page 4

RISE OF LABOUR PARTY.

ADVANCE SINCE THE "WAR. (Manchester Guardian Correspondent.) The Labour Party is a very now thing in political history. Thirty years ago Lie idea of an independent party was only just born; 20 years ago there were st.il! great sections of the trade union movement which hold aloof from political action. The first attempts to secure working men- representatives ware made in the late seventies; in. 1374 two members were elected—Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt, both miners’ leaders. In 1880 there wore three; in 1885 eleven (of whom six were miners), and they were recognised by the inclusion of Henry Broadhurst as an Undor-socrotary in a Liberal Ministry. But new forces were stirring, and there wove new competitors for the allegiance ol the working-class vote. The reactions of the “new unionism” of 1889 were soon felt in a remarkable growth of trade union membership, in the of Socialist ideas, and in the clear***»tergcncc of a movement for political independence. The Socialist bodies had been agitating for the creation of a Labour Party since 1887, and at, the Trades Union Congress of that year James Keir Hardie, delegate of the Ayrshire miners, had protested against alliance with the Liberals. In the following year Hardie stood as an independent Labour candidate in Mid-Lanark, and a Scottish Labour Party was formed, whose programme roads to-day as a very tame affair. But it was not until the genera! election of 1892 that real progress was made. Hardie was returned for West Ham ; there were 14 other workmen, including Mr J. Havelock Wilson, Mr John Burns, and Joseph Arch, who wore less independent of the Liberal Party.

From tho successes of 1892 emerged tho Independent Labour Party, founded under Keir Hardie's chairmanship, at Bradfordjn 1893. which was to take a middle course between tho theoretical Socialism of the Social Democratic Federation and the Liberal-Labour sentiments of tho trado ™s. At the general election of 1895 88 I.L.P, candidates wont to the noil, all of them, including Hardie and Mr G. N. Barnes, being unsuccessful. THE BIRTH OF THE LABOUR. PARTY. As tho trado unionist Liberal-Labour members mostly held their seats, the prospects of an, independent party seemed remote. The Trado Unions’ Congress was a battleground between the new ideas and the old. It exhibited the same contradictions that it does at present. It passed Socialist resolutions for the nationalisation of tho means of production, distribution, and exchange from 1893 onwards, but tho sympathies of its leaders were Liberal, and they opposed the Socialists on election platforms. When in 1890 the congress, by 516,000 votes to 454,000 (against the votes of tho miners and the textile workers), called a committee “to devise ways and means for the securing of an increased number of Labour members,” tho old trade unionists had no faith that anything would como of it. But the Socialist societies sent representatives to the committee (the best known of the surviving members of which are Mr Will Thorne, Mr Ramsay MacDonald, and Mr Bernard Shaw), and they were able ,lo thresh out a constitution for !ho Labour Representation Committee, a joint body consisting of trado unionists and members from the 1.L.P., tho S.D.F., and the Fabian Society. Mr Ramsay MacDonald was its first secretary. It secured two members at tho election of 1900— Mr Richard Bell (Derby) and Mr Keir Hardie (Merthyr). Its membership was 5ma11—575,931 affiliated trade unionists and Socialists, the latter numbering 22,861. In 1802 Mr David Shackleton was elected, and in 1903 Mr Will Crooks and Mr Arthur. Henderson. The tide was turning, and the resentment of trade unionists was roused by the Taff Vale decision. In ' 1906 the L.11.C. put u~ 50 candidates; 29 were successful. There were also a dozen other members, mostly minors who stood with definite Libera! support. By this time tho L.tl.C. had 900,CC0 members and had changed its name to the Labour Party. THE OSBORNE JUDGMENT.

Although almost submerged in the great Liberal majority of the 1906 Parliament, the l Labour, members exercised a useful stiffening influence, and,' retrospectively, the party claims credit for half a dozen of the social measures of the Government. As a separate party Labour’s influence waned until the Osborne judgment of 1909 brought tne trade unions to self-consciousness again. It was four years before the Liberal Government reversed the judgment, a delay which was responsible for converting many trade unions to political action; it brought the minors’ members over in a body. By 1913, in spite of 1 the restraining injunctions under the Osborne judgment, the Labour Party had nearly 2,000,000 members. lot those years between 1910 an 3 1914 can be regarded almost as a period of failure. The Labour Party was dull and

prosaic; it. struck neither the imagination nor the intelligence of the masses. In the House it was ineffective teoause it was hardly more Radical than the Government. In the country it could not satisfy the faith of the ardent Socialists, who drifted into Syndicalism, rank-and-file movements, and revolutionary trade unionism. The war changed all this. After losing aii influential fraction of its members, mostly those in the Independent Labour Party, the Labour Party threw itself ungrudgingly into the national war effort, so much so that in the first Asquith Coalition it violated its principles of independence and entered the Governments Mr Henderson, the chairman of the party, taking .Cabinet office. “WORKERS BY HAND AND BRAIN.” But in other ways the Labour Party was recreated by the war. By the time the Armistice came it had become more definitely Socialist. It had been academically Socialist since 1908, when by a narrow majority “Socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange to be controlled by a democratic State in the interests of the entire community ” had been adopted as a “definite object.” But at the same time it rejected a resolution which would have had the effect of excluding nonSocialists from the party. As a matter of practical polities the “definite object” did not even frighten the non-Socialist trade union leaders. During tire war. and in the (lush of the excitement about reconstruction, tho party assumed a new form. It admitted “'workers by brain,'’_ and so made a bid foV support from the- middle classes. In 1918 its object became. — To secure for tho producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may bo possible, upon the basis of common ownership of tire means of production, and mo best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

Resolutions of later conferences h.vc reduced this to some detail, and specified soint of tlie “essential public services” of which nationalisation is sought. Last year the Socialist ideal was put into a resolution moved by Mr Snowden, on behalf of tho party, in the House of Commons. By defining its social programme, its war aims, and its attitude to other than manual workers, the party took a great step forward, and, as one of its leaders has put it, “was transformed from a group representing merely the class interests of the manual workers into a fully-const it nted political party of national scope ready to take over the government of the country.”

If has since consolidated its forces, entered into closer alliance with industrial Labour through the Trade Unions’ Congress, established the beginning of a “General Stall',” and enormously improved its electoral organisation in the constiueneies. Nor should one, forgot the party’s educational side, its exploration of many problems of current importance, and its disseminalion of careful surveys and statements of policy on them. THE PARTY AND DOCTRINAIRE SOCIALISM.

The political progress of Labour can be summarised in the following table, of its successes at general elections:

(iVncral steals Members La-hour Elrcticn. content,rrl, returned. von*. 11)00 „ _ 15 2 62,608 10(16 ... _ 50 20 323,105 1.010 t.10n.1 78 30 505.600 into (Dec.) ... KG 32 370,802 3018 ... 361 57 2.24-1,045 1022 414 142 4,2311,733 1023 327 101 4.348,379

The numerical and financial strength of (ho parly has declined since 1919, owing to the falling-off in trade union membership. The income which depends on the lories of trade unions has also dropped off, hut may bo trusted to recover. Although they exorcise through the Socialist members of trade unions so large an influence on policy, the five, affiliated Socialist sociolies had a membershin (in 1922) of only 51,769 of the 3.311,036 members of the party. The 102 trade unions supplied 2,279,276 of the members, and a correspondingly largo proportion of the income. It is a striking fact that the membership of the Socialist societies is now loss than it was 12 years ago. but. the trade union membership of the party has nearly doubled. Yet the Socialist societies have trained, if they have not put up, perhaps two-thirds of the Labour members in Parliament. The Independent Labour Party

has been the chief agent in giving the Labour Party its Socialist tendency. Marxian Socialism in its earlier form of Social Demorc.racy and its later development of Communism has never taken hold. That the Labour Party is the least doctrinaire of any Socialist Party in Europe is a reflection on the British national character, and the course of its evolution will be, like that of all other British institutions, one of compromise, softening the asperities of theory and dogma.