THE WORLD TO-DAY

Southland Times, Issue 19501, 16 March 1925, Page 10

THE WORLD TO-DAY

PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL LIFE SEARCHING FOR A SOLUTION AN INTERESTING LECTURE. The following is a lecture delivered by Mr F. C. Lopdell, M.A. at the Teachers’ Refresher Class during last week:— THE CONSTITUTION IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC LIFE. The problem of all social life is to provide a true mean between liberty and order. Liberty is the condition of change and growth in which individuality finds expression, and the organisation of society is evolved; order is the condition of performance, the realm of law. All societies from the school or the football club to the great society of the nation must endeavour to find this mean. The problem arises in the simplest associations of school life; for games, clubs and committees, rules of procedure have to be built up. The child in conforming to the rules of a game and in conforming to the general code of the playground is getting unconsciously his first lesson in constitutional government. This is the teacher’s starting point in teaching civics.

Community life functions through institutions which have evolved to meet the growing needs of society. The greatest of all contributions to the solution of the problem of finding a happy mean between liberty and order is the British Constitution, a form of parliamentary government, with delegated authority to Councils, Boards, etc. From Greece the world gained its conception of liberty, from Rome law and order, and from Britain the actual machinery of representative government. It gives me pleasure in my class room to speak of Britain as the Mother of Parliaments, and our pride in this should so permeate the school and give interest in the reading of history as to continue the British traditional respect for the constitution and constitutional forms. HISTORY OF CONSTITUTION. Time will not permit of any more than a very brief historical description of the constitution. It’s roots are in the free assemblies of Anglo-Saxon times, the village moots, hundred moots, etc. There we find the idea of representation which is not seen in the Greek city States where all the citizens assembled. Edward I, 1272, con ceded that what concerned all must be approved of by all, but it was the principle of representation which made the ideal of Edward I practical. It was probably in Edward Il’s reign that the Commons began a separate House, and it is a long story of how they became the chief legislative body. During the Hundred Year’s War when Edward 111 was in great need, the Commons voted him supplies on condition they were expended in a certain way. This appropriation of supplies was the first step in acquiring control over Government policy, which had previously been in the hands of the King and his chosen councillors. Magna Charta was a contract with King John, who had to rule well, i.e. according to parliamentary ideas, or be dethroned. The Lancastrians received their throne from parliament and therefore were subservient to it. The Tudor’s expressed their despotism through parliamentary forms and it is not till the Stuart period that the issue of parliamentary government versus despotism is finally fought out. The “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 was the triumph’of the latter. So far it was a struggle for freedom, for the right of the people to govern themselves and the problem of building the machinery still to a great extent, remained to be solved. The discovery of party Government and the development of the cabinet was the discovery of the method of making parliament work. FLEXIBILITY. The constitution is flexible because it is built on precedent, is capable of modification as time and altering circumstances require. For instance there is no written law that there must be a cabinet. It simply grew because it was the only way parliament could discover to carry out its work. Its usefulness gave it permanence. The cabinet itself in the same way is subject to modification as was shown when Mr Lloyd George introduced into his war cabinet specially qualified business men. It is the characteristic genius of the British race that it can devise the means of adjustment in its constitution to meet the new needs, whether social or economic. Such being the case a community should be able to develop along any course of social or economic life, without resort to unconstitutional actin. In our constitution where does sovereignty reside? Jurists will tell you that sovereignty lies in King, Lords and Commons, but in actual fact all questions must be settled by public opinion, that is by representatives reflecting the opinion of the various constituencies. The democratic community must have a sound system of education, and a high standard of honesty and even then public opinion can deal only with the broad policy of Government. The function of democracy is not so much to govern as to appoint a Government. “All that Democracy ever meant,” said Thomas Carlyle,

“lies there—the attainment of a truer and truer Aristocracy, or Government of the best.” The people must know the broad facts of State and leave detail to their representatives.

It cannot be too forcibly emphasised that the community must be an entity, must have community consciousness. Lacking in this India or Ireland could not form a democratic Government, for it is only out of a unity, that it is possible to have, a sovereign public opinion, without coercion of th 2 minority. In other words the minority, for the good of the whole, must be prepared to fall in with the majority. By discussion and persuasion, by the Press and all agencies of propaganda public opinion is moulded. After discussion must follow agreement which, since it is rarely absolute in political and economic questions, involves an obedience of the minority to the majority. Without such obedience there could be no democracy, and anarchy would result. History affords numerous examples of nations, which have fallen in chaos and ruin because their consciousness of community was not strong enough to win the minority to obedience.

The community is the basis of our economic life. Production and distribution is a huge co-operation. Economists divide their books into sections on land, labour, capital and organisation, with rent, wages, interest and profits accruing to each respectively. The system has been called capitalistic on account of the predominance of capital. The problem of liberty and order has arisen m this sphere also. The old school of economists believed in little or no Government control -(laissez faire), but this was seen to operate in favour of capitalists to the detriment of men, women and children, and on behalf of freedom for those who were not economically free, the State has by factory legislation and Government ownership intervened in industrial affairs. ONLY POSSIBLE SYSTEM. Socialists claim that legislation has not brought freedom to labour. The present system was thus described in a recent booK by an extreme socialist: “Plutos (the rich) and Ochlos (the wage slave) ride a tandem bicycle and Ochlos does the pushing on the rear seat while Plutos leisurely steers the wheel in front, and wins the prize.” Though I claimed for the present system that it is a co-operation , yet it is not my purpose to argue that point. It certainly has its advantages and disadvantages, but it is not the only conceivable economic system and there is no reason, other than expediency, why it should not be revolutionised. It may be some day. How? Only two methods present themselves, that by the consent of the majority and that by the dictatorship of the minority. I have made it clear I hope that our existence as a community depends on constitutional procedure. All reforms, social political and economic have one road to travel: they must by propaganda, by discussion and persuasion and every publicity agency try to win the consent of the maior-

ity. So acted Bentham, Adam Smith, Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, and Cobden. “I am content,” says Cobden, “to be on this question in a minority, as I have been in others in a minority, and in a minority to remain until I get a majority.” Labour before the organisation of Trade Unions was at a disadvantage in bargaining for a larger share of wealth. Collectively they strengthened their position and the justice of tms was recognised by the legislation of Trade Unions in 1820. At first it appeared as if the Unions would cooperate with employers for the general good, but unfortunately the prevailing tendency has gone in the opposite direction, that of conflict. The position was to some extent recovered by the intervention of arbitration. The setting up of the Conciliation Council and the Arbitration Court was the attempt of the community to organise itself constitutionally to protect its economic life as it had done before its political life. I have diverted from my main theme of majority rule to touch on Trade Unions, because it is in the Unions that there is especially in Great Britain a subversive influence at work to undermine our whole constitution. There is a minority not prepared to accept the position as such. Says Professor Arnold: “There is a real and dangerous revolutionary element in the United Kingdom.” “The spreading reaction against democracy,” says Lloyd George, “is a serious movement which needs careful watching in all countries.” LABOUR’S DOCTRINE.

The revolutionists who have captured the executive offices of many of the large Unions receive their inspiration from Karl Marx, the exponent of the Class War doctrine. It is the essence of the Marxist theory that the nature of capitalistic production leads to an increasing awaredness of the class conflict, to an intensification of class consciousness on bothe sides, culminating in a revolutionary explosion. With such a belief it is no wonder that revolutionary leaders are pleased to put sprogs in the wheels of production. That lower production means unemployment and reduced wages is nothing to them, the poorer the workers become, the more they become class conscious, the more plastic material are they for the anarchist and the revolutionist. They have utterly rejected the constitutional method of introducing their socialism by consent of the majority, and have resorted to the class war and the Dictation of the minority. As in Russia the majority are to be coerced into obedience. The constitutional machinery evolved through a thousand years is to be summarily, scrapped.

It is a notable fact to readers of economic and social literature thar a great many of the leading professors in our Home colleges are engaged championing the cause of our constitution and exploding the fallacies that underlie revolutionary propaganda. The seriousness of the situation will be realised from the following quotations from Democracy and Labour by Professor Hearnshaw of London University: 1919-22: — Mr Robert Smellie, President of the Miners’ Federation, said, “I am going to Blackburn to urge the workers there to refuse to recognise the Coalition Government, and to form a Soviet Government.”

A meeting in the King’s Hall, at which were present, the Soviet President of Britain, McLean of Clyde, Robert Williams, of the Transport Worker’s Union, Mr Tom Mann, of the Engineers, and Mr C. T. Cramp of the National Union of Railwaymen, pledged itself “to help forward by all means in its power the world-wide Social Revolution of which the Russian workers and peasants are but the gallant pioneers.” In June, 1919, the Labour Party’s Conference at Southport by a vote of 1,890.090 to 935,000, accepted the policy of direct action as a means of compelling the British Government to keep its hands off Russia. Mr Williams, President of Transport Workers’ Union, during the strike asserted, “Direct action has definitely superseded Democracy.” The Daily Herald proclaimed that the Railway strike was the opening battle of the Social Revolution, “Be prepared people. Make ready to Rule.” COSTS OF STRIKES. Professor Hearnshaw gives the following estimates of the cost of the recent, strikes: The Railway strike of 1919 not only ruined the Railway Union, but cost the State some £10,000,060 and the losses to the community £40,000,000. The Coal War, 1920-21 cost the miners £14,000,000 and order to the value of £26,000,000, and the State a direct loss of £8,000,000. This may mean that ruin awaits our system of production, but nothing is more obvious than that it is the fault of misguided working people, dupes of foreign revolutionists. Leaders and executives have been largely won over and many are avowed believers in the Class War. The rank and file have not yet, judging from the last election results, been captured, but they are gradually being indoctrinated with the “goslow” policy, the canker which is eating out the morals of the worker.

It is far from my purpose to oppose labour, but I would point it to the right direction. Salvation does not lie in Class War, direct action and “go slow,” but in constitutional procedure, in winning it may be public opinion to adoption of socialistic production by the recognised machinery for the expression of the will of the majority. Refusing to work, working dishonestly (go slow) is only adding to unemployment, and aggravating the misery of the worker.

In conclusion I would add that as teachers we hold a most important office. We must inculcate in the young—the future workers — the traditional respect of the British race for Constitutional Government, teach them that to work is to be patriotic, for work is service to the community, that there is on patriotism without service, and that man can only serve his God, only if he first serves his fellow-men.