Labour in the Old Country.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 6, 5 August 1908, Page 45

Labour in the Old Country.

The success of the Labour party in winning over the members of the Miners’ Federation, hitherto allied with the Liberal party, is the most striking feature of British politics at the present time. The official figures published this week show that the Miners’ Federation have decided to affiliate with the Labour party by 213,137 votes to 168,294. Two years ago a similar proposal was rejected by a majority of 10,000, but much water ha s flowed under the bridges since then, and the Labour party has greatly increased its hold on the working class. The defection of the miners from the Liberal party means the extinction of the trade union or Liberal Labour group in the House, which will only have seven members left after the 13 miners have gone over to the Labour benches. The miners’ votes preponderate in about 90 seats in the United Kingdom, of which 59 are now held by Liberals, 26 by Labour members, and five by Unionists. If the electorates follow the example of their leaders and vote on the Labour ticket, the Liberals stand to lose a good many of these seats at the next election, and the Labour party to gain substantially. Labour will be much better off financially as a result of the new alliance, for

it means regular contributions io the party funds from 489,554 new members. This will bring the total membership of the party up to nearly 1,500,000, and a tax of only 2d per member per year will bring in £12,500, a sum sufficient to allow of 62 members being maintained in Parliament at £2OO a year, or 49 at £250. But the rate of contributions will probably rise a good deal higher. As a correspondent of the “Times” puts it, “the working classes are being rapidly converted to the belief that Parliament offers a short ent to the Labour millennium. The passing of the Trades’ Disputes Act and the Workmen’s Compensation Act, as well as the approaching approval of the Miners’ Eight Hours Bill and the old age pension scheme, are all financial gains, demonstrating that it is easier and cheaper, and entails less suffering, to fight out Labour’s battles on the floor of the House of Commons than by resorting to strikes. When such a conviction dominates the masses, it will be a comparatively easy matter to raise the contributions to the Labour party, so as to maintain 200 and even 300 members. A contribution of 6d per year would bring in £37,500, sufficient to allow 188 members £2OO per annum each. Little wonder that the time-hon-oured Radical item, State payment of members, has been quietly shelved.” The out-and-out Labour-Socialist view of the situation is that the new alliance marks the first stage in the conversion of the working-class from its allegiance to Liberalism and Toryism by the Independent Labour Party. The second stage, says Mr. Keir Hardie, is to make all the workers Socialists. “They were clearing the issues, and the fact that no miners’ leader in any part of Great Britain could stand on any political platform outside Labour was itself a great gain. The fight of the past had been for political freedom; that of the future was for economic freedom. They were only in the beginning of the struggle, but he predicted that in ten years Liberalism and Toryism would have disappeared from the political arena.” The “Times,” on the other hand, sees in the alliance of the miners with the Labour party a useful check on the Socialist element in that organisation, and describes it as a re-

assuring sign of the times, showing cleanly that “the overwhelming influence of the best elements of Labour are on the side of evolution rather than revolution.’’