WHAT IS LABOUR?

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18291, 14 June 1929, Page 13

WHAT IS LABOUR?

SOCIALIST WEALTHY CLASSES. In presenting the question “what is Labour?” we are not using the term in its general sense, but as it is used politically. Mr Ramsay Macdonald the British Socialist leader, said but recently that he preferred the name “Labour” for the Party he belongs to. As a politician he favours the name which pays best politically. A more recent pronouncement of his is that the party is not a class party. What, then, does Labour, mean if it has no reference to class? The answer is that for political purposes it has come to mean acceptance of. the doctrine of political socialism. The many people who from a sentimental desire to be fair to the working class, “vote Labour” should think this over. They are not voting for a class; they are not voting for Labour in the sense that is in their own minds. What they are doing is adding their endorsement to the doctrine and policies of political socialism. The idea that the creed of socialism has come from the unrest of the wageearning class is not historically well founded. Whether in its inceptions as Utopian socialism, as assumed scientific or as political doctrine, the ideology of socialism has been projected on the stage of human affairs mostly by men of wealth and leisure. Certainly the wrongs of mankind, the sufferings of the poor, the inequalities of possession have all been used as material from which to weave the dream, or dogma, of socialism. The idea of collective ownership to supersede all private ownership (which is the root principle of socialism), is not the product of the masses. It does not come from Labour, but is rather imposed on the minds of the workers as their only hope of material salvation. Taking the wage-earners anywhere, they desire personal possession and believe in private ownerhsip as much as any others. The political doctrines of Socialism and Communism presented to the world as “Labour” have come from minds that place a priori conceptions of human society above the realities of actual human experience. It is leisured, and in some instances wealthy individuals, who, from intellectual vanity desire for prominence, or ambition for power are chiefly responsible for the revolutionary creeds rnisamed “Labour.” The word Labour in its widest and truest sense means all human service. In the less wide sense it means the service of all employed on hire. In the political significance of to-day it is distorted to mean a philosophy of world hegemony which rests on abstract ideas at variance with the facts of human life. CAPITALIST LABOURITES. In 1887, Friedrich Engels, a Prussian capitalist and Socialist Revolutionary, the same who financed Karl Marx, wrote to Sorgfie (another Continental Revolutionary): “Dr Avrling is making a famous agitation in the East End of London. It is a matter of founding an English Labour Party with an independent class programme.” In 1892 Engels wrote again: “We are making great progress here in England.” The following year, 1893, the Independent Labour Party was formed under the leadership of Keir Hardie, whom Engels wrote of as “a poor devil of a Scotch miner.” This was the nucleus of the British National Labour Party. From the commencement it was socialist and revolutionary. By degrees it captured the trade unions, and later co-operatives, using the tactics of permeation it now condemns in the Communists. The evolution has been first the agitation of wealthy revolutionaries; second, the formation of a socialist party; third, its expansion on

lines of labour class organisation to a mass party and now being widely adopted by wealthy doctrinaire socialists. Wealthy revolutionists brought it forth. . The same have more or less moulded its polioies and progress. Today and so-called intelligentsia of leisured and wealthy individuals, Whilst seeming to merely adhere to it, really govern it. The name Labour flatters the mass of wage-earners into thinking it is their party, whilst more and more every year it is becoming the instrument of ■wealthy individuals and professional politicians who see in it a means to change the world to suit their doctrinaires ideas and serve their ambitions for prominence and power. Not all of these are revolutionists in their ideas. A number are of the class of individuals who turn most readily to the side which appears to be most successful. They would be equally complaisant under the name Liberal, Unionist, Nationalist, or almost any other. Of this type of politican, a witty Frenchman wrote that “they spend their lives coming to the aid of the majority.” There are a few of the politicians now named “Labour.” Lord Thomson, Lord Olliver. Lord Parmoor (in the Ministry); Mr Bernard Baron, a millionaire, liberal supporter, Mr G. B. Shaw, Sir C. P. Trevelyn left £250,000 in October last by his father, Earl de la Warr, the wealthy ground landlord of Buxhill, Noel and Roden Buxton, heirs of the great brewing firm, Countess of Warwick, Sir Oswald Mosley, Lady Cynthia Mosley. Mr Harry Day disposed of three theatres in 1928 for £250.000. Mr William Leach, pacifist, who made large sums out of manufacturing khaki during the war, Marquis of Tavistock, Viscount Ennismore, Sir Henry Slesser, Sir Patrick Hastings, Colonel Wedgwood Benn, Mr Arthur Augustis William, Harry Ponsonby. We might add others, Mr J. H. Thomas and some on the industrial side are men with large inoomes. Even Mr Sakiatvala, the Communist, is a wealthy man. He was manager in London of Tata Ltd., ! authorised capital £4,000,000. These are the people who talk of their party as “Labour” the party of the poor •workers. It is time the public learnt that “Labour” politically does not mean the workers. The party was born from the agitation of Marxian Socialist plotters of revolution, and it is used bv those to-day who seek political, economic and social revolution. Labour is the means, but socialism is the objective. It was this the German Marxian Socialists sought, and it has come to pass. The question is what comes next? (Contributed by Welfare League).