EVEN LABOUR LOVES TITLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17878, 21 June 1926, Page 13

EVEN LABOUR LOVES TITLE.

“ A PEER HITS BACK ” PEEP-SEATED INSTINCT. WHY WASTE TIME IN ATTACKING PEERAGE? (Special to the “Star.”) LONDON, May 4, “So much is written in these days of a democratic press attacking the incomes of peers of the realm, their rents and royalties, and challenging their very right to exist, that the average citizen almost takes it for granted that there is no answer to the challenge.” So says Lord Strathspey, in “John Bull.” ’ Lord Strathspey says that if any argument were wanted that the existence of hereditary rank springs from a much more deep-seated instinct than that giving rise to the demand for social equality, it is in the Socialist movement itself. “If heredity of position is a bad thing, then Socialism, even at its present stage of unfulfilled development, is well on the road to perdition. I do not wish to say anything about the creation of Socialist peers during the short term in which Labour held office. That step was prompted by certain political considerations which could hardly have been avoided without an unnecessary disturbance of the Parliamentary machine. The question of titles, in fact, docs not necessarily arise. It is possible to have the establishment of an hereditary class without the creation of dukes, earls and marA “The British Labour movement, as we know it is only a generation old. Most of the men who gave it the impetus necessary to bring it to its present powerful position are not yet grown old. And already we have a second generation of hereditary Labour leaders who owe their place in the councils of democracy largely to the fact that they are their fathers’ sons. THE MOTE AND THE BEAM. “I am not sure whether Lenin, the greatest of all revolutionists, had any children. If he had and his son paid a visit to this country our ‘democrats’ would be tumbling over one another for a sight of him. They would have receptions in his honour and would otherwise pay him their respects as ardently as the Royalists of a former day to a Stuart returning from exile. lam not saying that this is a bad instinct. My contention is that the hereditary principle is ineradicable and can never be abolished. You may dispossess the present aristocracy but it will only be to give place to another. THE TICKLE OF A TITLE. “There is another aspect of the question which lays the Red Men open to more severe criticism. It is bad enough to create an aristocracy of their own, but it is infinitely worse when they fawn before the existing aristocracy, for which they profess to have so deep a hatred. I suggest seriously that a title goes further in the Labour Party than in any other. If a young man of noble rank joins the Conservative Party he will not be given any preference because of that. A commoner with natural political talent stands a much better chance. Docs the same hold good in the Labour ranks? To judge from newspaper reports, it seems to me that the two most important figures on the Socialist platform to-day arc Mr Oswald Mosley, the son of a hereditary baronet and his wife, Lady Cynthia. "Recently Mr Mosley announced thathe had no intention of assuming the title of ‘Sir’ when he should fall heir to it. Hereditary rank, he asserted, was incompatible with real democracy. I am not so sure that he can abandon a title in this rather arbitrary fashion, lie may if he chooses be called plain ‘Mister’ by his friends, or better still, ‘Comrade,’ but he will retain his little niche in the reference books as ‘Sir Oswald Mosley.’ That, however, is beside the point. My contention is that had Mr Mosley been socially insignificant, and had his good lady been a daughter of the people and unknown to the illustrated papers, they would have had a much stiffer fight to achieve that widespread publicity which is so necessary to eminence in the ranks of Labour. We hear more about them, almost, than about Mr Ramsay MacDonald himself. Why ?

“Because the Socialists are hypnotised by a title. For all their talk of equality, they are as much impressed by titular rank as a serf on a feudal estate in the Middle Ages.

“Probably takes them at their word, and assume that there is something inherently wicked in the existence of titles, they arc much more to be condemned. The serf did not know any better. They do.

“Announce that a countess, a baronet or two, a fashionable society woman and the son of a Conservative Prime Minister will appear at a meeting convened to hasten the end of the present decrepit old order of things, and the Red men will turn out in battalions. Announce instead Bill Jones, who has more brains than the whole of the other lot put together, but who has no credentials except that he is a humble son of the people, ami the hall will be empty. That is a fact which cannot be disputed. I am aware that this phenomenon is noted and regretted in certain quarters of the Socialist movement itself. The ‘arrival’ of the democrats from ‘Dcbrett’ has not been accomplished without friction. “There are still a few plain men left on the Labour benches who realise the inconsistency and absurdity of the whole business. They maintain, quite logically, that they should either stop employing titles or stop abusing them. The fact that they have been overruled is another proof of my contention that wherever you go you will find that the majority of people instinctively prefer a society divided by rank to any other. It is an instinct that is as old as the hills, as old, in fact, as Socialism itself, which is no new theory. NEVER MIND THE TITLES. “Titled people, as a rule, are not antagonistic to the Labour movement. Thev are as sympathetic as any other class with those who fight to remedy the evils of society. But why waste time attacking the peerage as such? Abolish the House of Lords to-morrow, and you have not removed the causes of misrule, dispossess every hereditary landowner in the country and you have still to solve the problem bf poverty. Call every man equal if you will, but you must find a cure for the cancer of corruption. Let us all get together in finding the way towards that Merrie England in which there will be plenty and to spare for everyone, and never mind about the titles.”