LABOUR’S RICH MEN

Taranaki Daily News, 8 April 1927, Page 5

LABOUR’S RICH MEN

DUTIES OF WEALTHY SOCIALISTS. Mr. J. R. Clyncs, M.P. defended the position of rich men who throw in their lot with the Labour Party, when he presided recently at a concert of massed Labour choirs at the Municipal Hall, Tottenham, London, (reports the Glasgow Herald). Wealthy men who were Socialists, he said, were being reproached by the Tories for not throwing their property overboard. It would be just as reasonable for him to eay that no man could be a Christian and live in an Archbishop’s palace on many thousands a year. Some of the best friends of the Labour Party were men of wealth, and many of its worst enemies were working men, who did not as yet understand the party’s purpose. Only in one respect had the Labour Party anything to do with class, and that was with regard to Undertaking as its first duty ‘he elevation of tho working class for the reason that that was the only class in need of it. Socialism was a set of principles for a future economic life. A Socialist could not advance that life by deliberately making himself poor without making other men permanently better off. o a rich Socialist is to make more Socialists and not to make a fool of himself by adding one more to the poverty list. Men of all grades and classes might consistently join the Labour Party and pursue their private interests like other people, and face no test other than the test of honest conviction. Men who on this subject had written to the newspapers should give a little of their time to understanding wliat Socialism was. That applied especially to the shopkeeping and the middle class. Their prosperity depended not upon the presence of a small class' of excessively rich money sp hdera, but upon a large class of prosperoua wage earners.