IS LABOUR SNOBBISH?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 750, 24 August 1929, Page 10

IS LABOUR SNOBBISH?

FOREIGN CRITICS’ VIEWS

MAY BECOME A SERIOUS PROBLEM The British Labour Party has always been a puzzle to Scclalfela in Europe. It has become a greater puzzle than ever because of “the ease —and, indeed, enthusiasm— wlt> which new recruits from the geoisie or the aristocracy accepted in the Labour Party, an( j the rapidity with which they are advanced to power.” Such is the opinion of Dr. Ebon Wertheimer, London correspondent of “Vorwaerts” and other German Social Democratic papers for the past five years, wh has written a pungent but diverting book entitled “Portrait of the Labour Part}'.” The author is an experienced observer. He fought in the World War as an airman, and after the armistice took part in the Bavarian revolution. It is admitted frankly by Dr. Wertheimer that the British way is better than the German Socialists’ way. but he has detected in the British Labour Party "an element of snobbery which, if the portents are not deceptive, may, in the next five years, constitute one of the most serious problems within the party. Those politicians in New Zealand who frequently whimper under the lash of honest criticism ought to be grateful that they are never asked to see themselves as German critics might see them. Here are several thumbnail portraits of prominent persons in the British Labour Government as seen by Dr. Wertheimer: "In Mr. MacDonald he sees a man of great qualities', but hampered by defects —a certain aloofness and arrogance, liypersensitiveness, vanity. Mr. Snowden is ‘mentally a head higher than his leader,’ warmhearted under a cold and bitter exterior. Mr. Henderson and Mr. Clynes are ‘gilt-edged securities.’ ‘safe, homely men, in whose hands the continuity of the party as a working-class organisation is assured’; Mr. Sidney Webb is the greatest theoretician the Labour Party has ever had. Mr. Thomas lias courage, ‘the one extenuating feature in ihe character of this painful but disarming personality. As against those portraits, it may be noted that American observers have taken a different view of Great Britain’s second Labour Cabinet. They have discovered (according to "Time”) that: “In contrast to the H.S. Cabinet of ten. Great Britain is governed by an unwieldy group of some 44 Cabinet Ministers and Ministers not of Cabinet rank. Oldest in the MacDonald Cabinet is Lord Parmoor, 76, Lord President of the Council: youngest, Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 32, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; average age. 56. Of the new Cabinet, many were self-educated, born in poverty. “The Prime Minister was born in a Scottish hut. One of his Ministers waa an engine cleaner and fireman, ona worked in a cotton mill at the age ot ten. another’s father was a lace designer, one is the son of an Irish labourer. However, five have titles, four went to Oxford, two to Cambridge, three to the military schools of Sandhurst and Woolwich, and ona (Author-Economist Sidney Webb) was educated in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Of other members of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s Ministerial team the American observers piquantly record: “Snowden, Philip, wizened, pixielike Chancellor of the Exchequer, Labour’s bitter-tongued financial expert, who shares with legless Major Jack Bcnn Brunei Cohen the title of Cripple of the House of Commons; Henderson, Arthur, grey-mous-tached, placid Foreign Secretary. ‘Uncle Arthur’ Henderson is one of the oldest Labour M.P.’s in the House; he took his seat in 1903. Self-edu-cated, starting life as a Scottish iron moulder, he succeeds the blundering, monocled Sir Austen Chamberlain as director of Britain's foreign policy; Lansbury, George, irascible Commissioner of Works, England’s veteran radical. White-haired, with clipped mutton-chop whiskers, he is a teetoaller, a non-smoker, and was twice imprisoned; Webb, Sidney (now Lord Passfieli), erdudite Secretary of State for the Colonies and Dominions. Long nosed, with pince-nez glasses and a pointed chin beard, Sidney Webb is a noted author, one of Britain’s greatest political economists. In these works his partner is his no-less intellectual wife, Beatrice Potter Webb.”