ENGLAND TO-DAY

Otago Witness, Issue 3332, 23 January 1918, Page 65

ENGLAND TO-DAY

LETTERS OF THE REFORMATION

LABOUR, AND THE FUTURE

LONDON, November 16

"What happened at the by-election for North Salford is, I believe, an indication of the workings of the public conscience in England during tho war. Salford is a part of Manchester. It has always been a scat liable to be carried by a few hundred, votes one way or the other. In 1906 Sir W. P. Byles (as a Labour candidate) took it from the Unionist, who had sat for 11 years, by 1200 votes, and in 1910 ho held it by something less. But that is beside tho question. Salford was fought this month on entirely different lines.

Mr Ben Tillett, the Socialist, whose name was anathema to both parties only yesterday, has appeared in the war as a stormy petrel. Wherever there havo been industrial strikes he has been there, and almost invariably peace has come about. His old convictions are the same as ever, but, like practically all of the Labour leaders, he has been heart and soul for the war. His opponent was Sir Charles Mallet. It does not matter a great deal ..that Sir Charles Mallet was formerly a Liberal, for one of the great- political parties about as dead as the other. Nor 'does it matter a great deal that he was Financial Secretary at the War Office in' 1910-11, and that he recently wrote *an article in the Nineteenth Century on the pristine tenet of Freetrade. Even Salford is not so strong on Freetrade as it once was. But it does matter that of the two candidates the National Government put its imprimatur on Sir Charles, and that the people of .Salford, on a poll as full as it could bo with so many men out of tho country, elected Mr Tillett by a very decisive majority. There have been so-called '"by-elections lately, including the "spoof" one at Islington, where the National Party put up its first candidate, but Salford is the first expression of opinion since the war became a national and historic fact. And it shows clearly how completely the shibboleths of our party politics have been marooned. Most of our troubles that are not seated m the dregs of feudalism are definitely traceable to tho conflict of party polities—our lack of education, our liquor question, our militarv unpreparodness. and our Ireland. And Salford says plainly that the world is living to-day for something entirely different. Ben Tillett stood first of all for the vigorous prosecution of the war. But so did Sir Charles Mallet. Mr Tillett .was straight out for a better social future, and meantime for better pay for our soldiers and sailors, and direct State control of the necessaries of life. He had clear visions of what sort of a world wo should hope for after the war, and he was unmistakably the candidate of the Labour Party. There is no other political party that can take any comfort from his election.

Mr Tillett's election indicates, if any jjuch indication were required, the absolute solidarity of the Labour Party in favour of the war ; but that was also proved by the remarkable, vote of the South Wales miners on the proposal of the Government to make a rigorous " comb-out " in the mines-. •In every single district they rejected the proposed strike, the aggregate being 28,903 for and 98,946 against it. There could be no doubt at • all about the loyalty of the British working man. In spite of strikes and friction, nobody knowing anything of the subject has ever believed" otherwise. They, like all other classes except the officials, have passed through the fire of a revolution. England to-day is in 'the reformation. For the first time for how long there is a real public opinion in the country directed towards a better England, and informed as to ways and means. The South Wales miners, whose recalcitrance was the bugbear of the medievalists for the first three years of the war, have actually banded with the railwaymen to assume financial responsibility for a working men's college for the study of history and economics. They have found their trust in the old parties a barren failure, and, like most people, are looking forward in a constructive spirit to a future which they believe will be good if they can only make it so. It is not only the working classes who have these views. They are admitted Suite frankly through all grades of society, inly a day or two ago, in the House of Lords, the Marquis of Salisbury himself was pleading for tolerance and a square deal for Labour, which, ho said, " the governing classes had been inclined to regard as a sort of dangerous animal of enormous strength and great potential violence.'' Tho Archbishop of York regretted that Labour had no representative in the Lords to speak for it. One of the leading intellectual weeklies, discussing Salford, says Sir Charles Mallet had "no vision to bring before the electorate of the new world after the war. He had no idea that anything was to happen when peace came, beyond a general tidying up, and as prompt as possible a reversion to the very profitable organisation of British industry that was interrupted by tho invasion of Belgium. The equally bellicose Mr Tillctt, who expressed something very much more revolutionary, was overwhelmingly preferred." And yet, as Dr Lang says, and as we all know from our experience of tho winter of 1916-17, the British workman is emphatically not a revolutionary. What he wants is to "get forrader." Generally, ho is not a man of imagination, but he has seen idols and ideals tumbling about him for three years and a-half, and he sees plainly that he must imagine things for himself if he would compass them. Hence all this awakening and craving for light and education. To the working classes has lately been added the great force of the co-operative societies throughout, tho Kingdom, a forco which combines something of collectivism with something of capitalism, and which represents to-day about 15,000,000 of thcpcople of these islands. Prophets have declared \ that labour and the co-operative members will rule Parliament to-morrow. The education question, one may safely say. is going to be redeemed by the great crusado of 1914-7. Arguments which for 50 years have fallen on deaf ears have prevailed in 1917 without even being adduced. The sheer moral conscience of tho nation has demanded education, for all, and the greatest bravado conceivable to-day would be the man who should stand up and say : We cannot afford it. Of course the obscurantists have brought forward the old heresy of tha liberty of the subject, to show that it is tyranny to compel young people to learn.

To which Mr Fisher rejoins:—"lndustrial compulsion may, perhaps, be described as a form of slavery, but educational compulsion is a condition of larger freedom. I havo been ir.-jfcacnsely impressed by the widespread enfchftriasm for education shown bv the working classes.- This, I think, is ultimately due to. the great shock which tho war has imparted to the general body of prejudice and custom and to a deeper and more permanent line of reflection which it has set up. An objection has come from agriculturalists which means that farming is so occult, so difficult, so beyond the reach of ordinary intelligence that no boy can master it unless he is taken out of school at 12. Wo must knock that preposterous rubbish on the head once and lor all. Depend upon it, there is no industry in this country that has more to gam from intelligent, well-educated labour than the farming industry, and until we get a far higher level of education in our agricultural population we shall never get farming put on a satisfactory basis."