LABOUR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17029, 1 May 1923, Page 7

LABOUR.

POSITION IN ENGLAND. Mr Shaw Desmond suggests in “ Labour, the Giant with the Feet ot Clay,” that the Labour movement is inwardly in a bad state, and that there are many rival factions trying to gain the control. Writing of the difference between pre-war arid post-war Labour, he says “In Great Britain, the difference between the pre-war Labour movement and the after-the-war movement is simply the difference between ‘ religion ’ and ‘ politics.’ From the ’Bo’s down to 1914, that movement was more a religion than a politic. To-day it is more ‘politic’ than ‘religion.’ The man has become merged in the machine of politics, the machine mastering the Mr Desmond contends that the British worker is not usually intellectual, but, as a compensation, he has a sense of humour : “ Every Labour Congress can—and for this the Gods be thanked!—at any moment become a circus. At a certain Labour Party Congress, a speaker, portentous, boring, began ones of his periods with : ‘ Speaking of Ireland as a whole . . .’ Instantly the delegate of the Musicians’ Union from his seat in the gallery sprang up to what he called ‘ a point, of order and another injustice to Ireland.’ ‘Mr chairman,’ he said, with terrific solemnity, ‘ who is it that dares call Ireland a “ hole ”?’ ” There is not likely to be any revolution in this country, writes the author. There is, and always will be, lots of talk about it, but. so far as the working man is concerned, it ends here. •* Given Trafalgar Square, a crowd of twenty thousand, and a band playing ‘The Red Flag,’ and the Anglo-Saxon trades unionist, his big heart filled to overflowing, will pass resolutions until Gabriel blows his trumpet, but the day the revolution comes and the ! barricades go up in the Square, there will be nobody to man them.”