From Workhouse to Westminster

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 22, 1 December 1909, Page 2

From Workhouse to Westminster

THE LIFE STORY OF WILL CROOKS, M.P. REMARKABLE HISTORY OF A REMARKABLE MAN (Written Specially for the “Weekly Graphic.”)

THE life story of Will Crooks, Labour M.P. for Woolwich, who is at present on a visit to New Zealand, might readily be woven into a ro<manee. Born in a workhouse, the child of poverty, in the East. End of London, he rose to manhood and eminence by sheer grit, ability and an undying conviction that the cause of tire masses was his mission in life. There ■is no more picturesque figure in the Labour world to-day, not forgetting even Koir Hardie himself. There ,is no leader more beloved by the people for whose claims to humanitarian treatment he has devoted the best years of his life. Will Crooks is a name to conjure with among the mass of the metropolitan millions. Apprenticed in early life to a eooper, and living afterwards in the East End of London, Mr. Crooks knows the working classes through and -through, their joys and sorrows, their strength and their weaknesses. He excels all other Laljour orators in his power to move an audience to laughter or to tears. Even a House of Commons audience, usually so blase in regard to oratory, has listened with moist eyes to the simple pathos of some of Mr. Crooks’ stories of East E-nd poverty. On the platform Mr. Crooks is* delightfully natural. He talks to his audience" instead of making a speech at them. His rich vein of racy humour is accentuated by his Cockney acc’ent, and he sdldom speaks for more than a few minutes without having his audience laughing with him. Early Years. ' 3 “ ’ The early years of his life were ■crowded with all the misery arid horror of pauperism. His father was a ship’s stoker, who lost an arm by the starting of the machinery comparatively early in life. His only chance of livelihood was getting odd jobs as a watchman. The consequence was he was often unemployed, whilst the breadwinning fell to his wife. Will Crooks has related how his mother used to toil with the needle far into the night and early morn, slaving as hard as any poor sweated woman could. There was a family of seven to provide for. “We were so poor,” he says, “that we children never got tea for months together. It used to be bread and treacle for breakfast, bread and treacle for dinner, biead and treacle for tea, washed down with a cup of cold water. Sometimes there was a little variation in the form of dripping. Once rpy elder brother and I were sent to buy a whole quarter of a pound of butter—it turned out Auntie was coming to tea—and on the wav we speculated seriously whether mother was going to open a shop. . . . God only knows, God only will know, ■how my mother worked and wept.” Driven to the Workhouse. Extreme poverty eventually drove the family to the workhouse—-the •workhouse of Dickens’ day with Bum■bledon rife a-nd humanity wrong. It was a tragic episode that left the most vivid memories on the mind of the boy who was one day to become Chairman of the self-same Institution, and sweep away its miserable methods, which made poverty a crime, and ruined the lives of countless people. At eleven years of age Will was employed in a blacksmith’s shop, having been at work ever since he was eight, when he earned sixpence a week for getting up at a quarter to five in the morning and assisting the milkman on ibis rounds. At fourteen he was apprenticed to a eooper—a trade in whieh lie became very skilled. Crooks was learning life at the age when other boys are learning Latin. He read all he could lay hands on i-n his straightened circumstances. Scott and Dickens ■were his favourite- authors, whilst the speeches of John Bright and others fixed his imagination with politics.

The Bitterness of Unemployment. 1 On a grey morning in December of 1871, Will Crooks was married to the daughter of an East London shipwright. For the first two or three years life was fair and pleasant sailing. The bright hopes soon collapsed. Good craftsmanship and trade unionism blended as they were in him, made him rebel against certain unfair conditions of his work; so he lost his work. It was then he underwent the bitterness of unemployment. ' Every shop and yard in London was closed against him. Word had gone round that he was an agitator. All the way. from London he tramped to Liveipool, and when he got there bis boots were without soles. He obtained work, and sent for his wife and child with his first week’s wages, only a month later to undergo a sore trial. The little baby died within a month of its arrival in the great port, and the loss so affected the mother, Crooks had to take her away back to London. No better fortune awaited: them in the metropolis. Crooks endeavoured to get work as a dock hand, and so entered the ranks of casual labour. The story of his unemployment with its disheartening tramps across London in search of work cannot be told here. To learn something of what he and his wife suffered, or how in the hour of their distress they emptied their cupboard to save another family from starvation, one must read the life story of the man as related by George Haw in “From Workhouse to Westminster.” His Advance to Public Life. Crooks’ aptitude for oratory, his inherent and buoyant humour, and his rapidly expanding knowledge of public affairs, brought him into, popularity with his fellows when once he got back to regular employment. For ten years he worked incessantly as a cooper in an East London brewery, and it is rather remarkable of the man to relate that from boyhood he remained an ardent teetotaller. His admonitions against drink and betting were to the point and irresistible. He relates of a railway guard who went home one night a bit elevated. He saw the eat lying on the hearthrug and threw it into the oven, slamming the door and yelling “Take yer seats for Nottingham.” Crooks had a hundred happy illustrations to urge upon his working-class hearers the duties of citizenship and co-operation. He established what was known as “Crooks College”, at the dock gates, a place of meeting where the workers gathered every Sunday morning to hear him lecture. The “college” became a propagandist body, and its agitations resulted in the founding of free public libraries, technical schools, and other public institutions. He was subject to constant misrepresentation by the London journals who did not see in him a factor for the political organisation of the East End working classes. Affliction and Responsibility. The great dock strike of 1889 nearly brought Crooks to his grave, as much of the brunt and burden of that famous struggle fell on his shoulders. He was laid up for months in the hospital in consequence. On top of that came the death of his wife just after he had been returned for Poplar to the London County Council in 1903. Ueft with six children, he endeavoured to combine public and domestic duties for twelve months, when he met tire lady who is now his wife, and she decided his fate. In Public Life. His career in public life has been marked by rare executive ability. He threw himself heart and sold into the work of the London County Council which took an enterprising turn under the Progressive regime. Prior to their return to- power the functions of local government had b*m largely a favourite

preserve for influential contractors and men, who in the colonies are usually designated “with axes to grind.” In the face of the bitterest opposition from the huge vested interests represented, and the misrepresentation of the Press, he fought for the cause, “The greatest good for the greatest number.” The late Sir John McDougall, chairman of the L.C.C., paid warm tribute to the qualities of the member for Poplar as follows: “His zeal is great, and his wisdom is as great as his zeal. I doubt whether anyone in London has done so much as he in all the measures which tend to the uplifting and the good of the people.” Crooks took an active part in promoting technical education, the construction of the Blackwall tunnel under the Thames, the feeding of the poor, turning workhouse children into useful citizens, the compulsory payment of trade union rate of wages in contracts, and many other reforms. In 1903 came his election to Parliament, where, with the band of other Labour members in the House of Commons, he has been a consistent and strenuous advocacy for the mitigation of those appalling evils which dominate the lives of over 38,000,000 of people in Britain. Wliat Crooks Stands for. In a brief sketch it is impossible to relate of the man all that his vigorous personality and persistence has brought him to. If East London had the deciding vote as to who would be next sovereign, assuredly Will Crooks would be elevateu to the throne. But his aspirations lie not. in the direction of privilege and high office. His voice in Parliament will always ring out for the unemployed and the submerged masses. He will be known to the future historian as one of the first humanitarians of his day who saw in the powers of the State a lessening of the evils of excessive wealth and universal poverty. England has need of rhany men of his stamp, who sacrifice no political practice to idealistic theory, but whose whole life is one pent up and stupendous protest, against the iniquity which foredooms the unborn generations to unspeakable social horror. It is that horror which has damned their parents and it is chiefly men of the stamp of this broad shouldered, black-bearded son of Poplar, who himself suffered the rack of pauperism for years, that can bring it home to the great aristocratic and middle classes. They are the responsible people, and Crooks is determined that they shall not escape their responsibility, any more than the demon of poverty shall in this age claim millions of underfed, underpaid, and demoralised men, women, and children for its own.