LABOUR ON THE STAGE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 86, 2 April 1914, Page 4

LABOUR ON THE STAGE.

There is something both interesting and significant about the latest phase of Labour propaganda, says a writer in a Home journal. Hitherto Labor has confined itself to two channels of propagandist work only—speaking and didactic journalism. Mr Sexton’s play—a presentment, and apparently a very able presentment, of the official trade unionist case against Syndicalism—is the first attempt to utilise a third, more picturesque and in some ways even more direct method of appeal. Psychologically it is perhaps worth nothing that it is the leader of the relatively small clericalist element in trade unionism who has made this pioneer venture. Practically it may have very important consequences. It is carrying the war into the enemy’s camp, for the ordinary theatrical audience, certainly in London and in a less degree almost everywhere, is nearly always reactionary in temper. This is in every sense a great advance; the main weakness of Labor politics in this country, paradoxical as it may sqund-to Tory ears, has in the past been that they have been too defensive and apologetic. Labour has no real cause to apologise for finding its present conditions unsatisfactory; and the best way to convince the comfortable classes of that is to break, in a manner so vivid that it cannot be ignored, their astonishing ignorance of what these conditions are.