CHAPTER XXIII ADVENT OF THE POLITICAL LABOUR PARTY
Congratulations—A Letter from Bishop Talbot—Bar-parlour Opinion—The Press on the Victory—The Birth of a Party—An Opponent of the South African War.
Before Crooks went down to the House of Commons on the following day, he had a busy morning opening telegrams to the number of two or three hundred.
Mr. John Burns, Mr. Keir Hardie, Mr. David Shackleton, wired their congratulations from the House of Commons. Other messages came from trade unions and groups of working-men and working-women in various parts of the country. Among them were telegrams from dockers at Middlesbrough, coopers at Birmingham, postmen in London, engineers at Newcastle, and cycle-makers at Coventry.
These well-wishes from the ranks of Labour poured in simultaneously with congratulations from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Hon. Maud Stanley, Lord Tweedmouth, Mr. Beerbohm Tree, and many ministers of religion.
The late Sir Wilfrid Lawson, as was his wont dropped into verse. He wired from Carlisle:—
Hurrah! The future brighter looks;
We worry on by hooks and Crooks.
Oh, what a heavy, heavy blow
Last night you struck on Jingo Joe!
From the Bishop's House, Kennington, S.E., Dr. Talbot wrote:—
I wish, as one to whom, as its Bishop, the affairs of Woolwich are of great interest, to offer you my sincere good wishes for your Parliamentary course.
I am aware that by so writing at this moment I may risk misunderstanding and seem to "worship the rising sun," and that you may not care for words when there were not deeds in support.
But I venture to risk this: and to trust you to take as genuine what is genuinely said. I think you are the man to do this.
I cannot but feel and I desire to express great satisfaction that the needs and interests of Labour should have their representative in one who has given such proof of desire to work and suffer for the welfare of his fellow-men as you have done.
All that I have heard of you commands my admiration and respect. It will be a great pleasure to find there are occasions when we may co-operate for the public welfare in Woolwich.
Had the Bishop of Bloemfontein—Chandler—been in England, I might have asked him for an introduction to you; as it is, may our common friendship for him serve the purpose.
You will come into Parliament with great power from your character and experience, and as the representative by such a majority of such a place. May you seek, and may God Almighty give you, the wisdom and strength to use rightly this great position.
To turn from the Bishop to the bar-parlour will help us to preserve the balance of things human. While Dr. Talbot was sending his blessing from the Bishop's House, there came a chorus of good-wishes from nearly every public-house in Woolwich. This was all the more remarkable because Crooks had made the constituency hold its sides with laughter over the innumerable stories he told during the campaign against beer-drinkers. Those who laughed the loudest were the drinkers themselves, admitting while so doing they had never heard a teetotaler put the case against them so well before.
It was a great delight to Crooks to learn that even the regular tipplers were saying among themselves that "although that chap Crooks don't spare us blokes, he's the man for our money."
One conversation reported to him from a public-house a few days after the election was certainly quaint and amusing. The narrator was the best of mimics. He told how the subject of the election was introduced by "a long thin man with a sheeny nose," who had just come in.
"Well," began the new-comer, without any preliminary, "I've read 'The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,' but I tell you Woolwich licks the lot."
"What about Napoleon Bonaparty?" ventured one of the company.
"Bonaparty? What did Bony do? Why, ten years after Wellington won Waterloo things was back worse than they was before."
"I thought Bill Adams won the battle of Waterloo," called out a voice from the corner bench.
"You shouldn't think; it might hurt yer head."
"D'yer reckon as Crooks is bigger nor Bony was?" inquired the first questioner.
"Certainly I do," said the long thin one, severely. "What did Bony do? Why, he made men fight for him. But what did Crooks do? Why, he taught men to fight for themselves and their families. See? Bony built his house on the sands, and the tide of humanity has washed it away. Now Crooks taught us men to build our own house, and nothing can destroy it while we stick together."
To the new Member there came in due time congratulatory messages from Europe, America, South Africa, and Australia. Children also sent him their well-wishes—children are always writing to Crooks—one letter being signed by a whole family of them in Plumstead with their ages set out like stepping-stones after each signature. This "little household," as they called themselves, told him how eagerly they had "watched the papers," and how glad they were he had won.
One only of the many letters that poured in sounded a despondent note. It was signed by two desolate old women who lived together in Poplar.
"We have just heard," they wrote, "you have been elected Member for Woolwich. Does this mean you are going to leave Poplar? If so, please give up Parliament, for who have we to look to for help if you go away?"
Some of his supporters were anxious to serve him in a practical way. The workers at a tailoring establishment in Woolwich asked him to allow them to make him a suit of clothes "as a thank-offering for the splendid victory." When a fortnight later they sent the suit it was with an expression of "regret that it is not like our esteem—warranted not to wear out."
The Press all over the country was profoundly impressed by the result. The Liberal papers for the most part were too eager to hail it as a blow at the Conservative Government to see its true significance. The Conservative papers, in attempting to lessen its effect on their own party, got nearer to the real meaning that lay behind the victory.
As the Times put it:—
The result ... means that the questions bound up with the existence of an organised Labour Party which have been hitherto regarded as chimerical are coming to the front in practical politics.
The Pall Mall Gazette also got near the mark:—
Mr. Crooks's return is first and most obviously an indication of the growing strength of the idea of an organised Labour Party, such as under the name of Socialism is so potent a force in Continental politics.
For Woolwich was the first manifestation to the public of the birth of the political Labour Party.
The election came within a few weeks of the famous Newcastle conference of the Labour Representation Committee, whose delegates represented over a million organised workmen in the country. That was the conference which decided on the absolute independence of the Labour Party. Almost the first duty of its secretary, Mr. J. R. Macdonald, on his return from Newcastle was to issue an appeal "to everyone in London interested in the formation of a Labour Party in the House of Commons to go to Woolwich to help Mr. Crooks."
The best explanation of the striking Labour triumph was given by Crooks himself in the Daily News:—
"The workman is learning after years of unfulfilled pledges and broken promises of the usual party stamp that before he can get anything like justice he must transfer his faith from 'gentlemen' candidates to Labour candidates. The workman has seen how the 'gentlemen' of England have treated him in the last few years—taxed his bread, his sugar, his tea; tampered with his children's education, attacked his trade unions, made light of the unemployed problem, and shirked old-age pensions.
"What the workman has done in Woolwich, you will find he will do in other towns."
His prophecy was fulfilled within three years. The General Election of 1906 saw Labour men for the first time returned for two or three dozen constituencies, some with the greatest majorities known to political history. As the amazing results poured in from day to day, with their three and five and even six thousand majorities, a prominent public man declared at the time:—"This is the Party that was born at Woolwich."
One significant phase of the Woolwich by-election was emphasised by the Speaker. Here, in a district where the majority of workers earn their daily bread in the Government Arsenal, a man was elected who had bitterly opposed the South African war, which from the material standpoint had brought a period of prosperity to Woolwich without parallel. The Speaker went on to say:—
Mr. Crooks was among the sturdiest and most outspoken opponents of the war and its objects, and a man who survived that ordeal may be trusted to stand to his colours in the next emergency. He was a conspicuous member of what was called the "Pro-Boer" party. He was one of the orators at the famous Trafalgar Square meeting that the jingoes broke up.
In the pages of the same weekly journal the new member for Woolwich wrote an article on the Labour Party. "The Labour Party," he said, "is quite a natural result of the failure of rich people legislating for the poor. The one hope of the workman is a strong Labour Party.... The Labour Member has nothing but his service to give in return for support. Perhaps he is dependent on his fellows for his maintenance until Payment of Members is secured. The continued selection of rich men for working-class constituencies is a perversion of representation, and quite as absurd as it would be to attempt to run a Labour candidate for the aristocratic West-End division of St. George's, Hanover Square."