A SOCIALIST ON PARLIAMENT.

Colonist, Volume LIII, Issue 13109, 18 May 1911, Page 1

A SOCIALIST ON PARLIAMENT.

Mr. George Lansbury, a vSocialist ' M.P., interviewed by the Labour Leader on the subject of the House of Commons, said:—"Don't got it into your head that we are overworked and overburdened. The House is the most delightful club in the world, and everyone is nice and pleasant. Don't make any mistake about it, the socalled upper classes know how to get the soft side of you. But when they , are so kind in the House of Commons I feel that they have their tongues ■ in their cheeks the whole time. They ! will be exceedingly courteous to you, | but I have the impression that their friendship is often an effort to blunt your keenness to get them off the backs of the workers. I have a shrewd suspicion they smile behind our backs and congratulate themselves on how they are compromising our determination to win social justice. No, it is not in the House of Commons that overworks you, it is the want of work the want of anything effective* to do. The procedure is worthy of a lunatic asylum. Take the all-night sittings. I have been taken to task for not sitting up the other night when the Opposition gave Mr. Churchill a warm time. We)], I will sit up when necessary, but I'm not going to sit up for fun of it. After the all-night sitting to which I have referred, member after member of all parties came ur> to me and said. 'You misled a beano last night; it was as good as a music-hall.' I rep"ied, 'If I want a beano I can go to the Alhambra for a shilling and go to bed too.' That is characteristic of the atmosphere of unreality in the Commons. To talk about the House as a scene of a gigantic struggle between people and Peers is all humbug."