AT THE CROSS-ROADS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19846, 21 May 1927, Page 13 (Supplement)

AT THE CROSS-ROADS

THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY QUARRELS BETWEEN JEALOUS LEADERS ( By SHAW DESMOND in the Sunday Pictorial. ) Having made a careful study of the political Labour Party throughout Great Britain, Mr Desmond is of opinion that the divergences of opinion amongst the leaders are so wide that there is no prospect of concerted action between them. He suggests that this is the moment for the trade unions to disentangle themselves from politics and, by assisting to regain the industrial prosperity of the nation, render their members a real service. 'I ’HE expulsion of Mr George Spencer, M.P., and the subsequent resignation of Dr. Haden Guest from the ranks of the Parliamentary Labour Party are but isolated indications of the discord within Labour’s ranks. Labour is at the crossroads, where a signpost stands pointing with two arms and in opposite directions. One of these arms bears the motto: 1 ‘This way to Liberalism.” The other: “This way to Communism.” How will Labour decide? The Parliamentary Labour Party is to-day, for the most part, Liberal rather than Socialist in policy and aims. It has quite frankly, as some of its most prominent critics state, “sold the Socialist pass.” It has absorbed leading Liberals—from Lord Haldane downwards. In turn, it has been itself absorbed by the spirit of Liberalism. Leaders of political Labour are not really Socialists. They are Liberals who advocate nationalisation. Mr J. Kamsay MacDonald is not, in. the true sense, a Socialist; Mr J. H. Thomas is not in any sense; and as for Mr Snowden, it would seem that his recent writings prove him to be nearer even to the Conservatives than to the Liberals. In a word, the Labour Party, as such, has ceased to have any reason for ’separate existence. A Liberai-Labour alliance is already in tho foreground, and, indeed, is being indirectly advocated by some of Labour’s leading adherents. So much for the bulk of political Labour to-day. But there is inside the Labour Party a Minority Movement. There is a revolutionary left wing, with the Clydeside members in the forefront, which, if it were not for political exigencies, would cheerfully rip out every main plank of the Labour Party ship. Outside the party there is a rabid Communist faction intent upon disrupting Labour in Parliament. Thus the so-called Labour Party has two distinct and discordant voices. A Party Within a Party. * The Independent Labour Party, which is supposed to be the brains of the movement and is still nominally part of the Labour Party, is detested by some of the political leaders. Led by “Jimmy” Maxton—an absolutely honest but absolutely muddled Scot—it wants neither what is known as the MacDonald policy of creative evolution nor the Communist policy of destructive revolution. It wants a sort of middle way which no member of the 1.L.P., including Mr Maxton himself, has hitherto been able to define. And the I.L.P. is itself already dividing into two quarrelling wings—a left and a right, as half a hundred of its recent hectic pronouncements prove. Even this fragment of the movement has two voices of its own. Let us prove the statement out of the lips of the leaders. The Right Hon. J. H. Thomas, P.C., M.P., in his recent diatribe against the revolutionary wing, says: “Have we come to the parting of the ways? It may be. lam content that it should be so.” But his colleague, Mr F. H. Rose, M.P., has just written: “Far more than Cook, he [Mr J. H. Thomas] is responsible for the dire calamity we have to deplore this vear of our disgrace. What can it matter to any of us who gets the best of this sordid controversy?” Mr John Beckett, M.P., writes in the New Leader: “The Labour movement is being rapidly turned into a carefully controlled pawn in the political game,” and goes on: “The Left must fight in the I.L.P. almost as hard as in the wider (that is, the national Labour) movement.” In this last, Mr Beckett gives the show away. Labour is at the crossroads. Duel Behind Closed Doors. The two nagging wings of the political Labour movement show that it is split from keel to masthead. When we come to the graver breach between the Trade Unions and the political Labour Party, we need only refresh our memories with the bitter and nauseating attacks and coun-ter-attacks of the two sides during and after the recent general strike and the coal strike. I have recently made a trip to the industrial North, and everywhere I found evidences of the irremediable nature of this breach; everywhere the two voices of Labour. The truth is that the industrial leaders and the politicians are engaged in a deadly struggle for control of the national Labour movement. It is a duel to the death, even though it is fought largely behind closed doors. n In a sentence, Labour is muddled. The leaders are fighting upon policy and principles. The rank and file don’t trust the leaders, and the leaders regard the rank and file as pawns in the game of politics. All of which points unmistakably to one outstanding fact —the Class War cannot be prosecuted under such circumstances, and is gradually being given up. What follows? If the Class War can no longer be continued by this thoroughly disorganised party, in which the political leaders are at loggerheads and in which a life and death struggle is going on between the industrial and the political wings, is it not time that the average trade unionist and Labour adherent began to reconsider his position? Is it not time to think of finding a way out from sectional politics? What is that way to be? The first step might be the Getting in order of the house of trade unionism by cutting down official expenditure and reducing “the plague of petty officials” inside the unions. According to a recent statement by Mr Robert Williams, of the Transport Workers, many of these unions are up to their necks in debts and overdrafts. Indeed, probably a majority of the big unions to-day are bankrupt if it came to a show-down. Class Politics or Common Sense. The next step might well be a gradual cutting adrift from class politics and from those politicians who have long since ceased to be or to think Labour, and who represent merely a Liberal policy plus nationalisation. In that event, what is to prevent the disillusioned and dissatisfied battalions of Labour frankly acquiring shares in the businesses they help to build and becoming co-partners with the employers; become, in a word, their own part-employers, and so form what would virtually be one union for masters and men? Italy and America have both done this. The disillusionment of Labour with its leaders and with the policy of the Class War has led to a new spirit. It is Mr. Frank Hodges, secretary of the Minera’ International Federation, who sounds the keynote of the new spirit when he writes: “The moment has arrived when the trade union movement must decide definitely either to join in the task of establishing industrial prosperity and thus improving the opportunity for a higher standard of life, or to remain in a state of inertia and indifference to industrial well-being and allow the standard of life to be gradually debased.” The living standard of the British worker is already a't least 50 per cent, below that of the American, and may, as time goes on, fall below even that of the Italian. It has now become a question of the Labour movement facing the facts and either coming in with the employers to sail the national ship as a united captain and crew, or of seeing “the dole” with increased unemployment ultimately lead to starvation of life, and probably forced emigration. Labour is at the crossroads.. Which road will Labour choose?