CHAPTER XXVIII THE QUEEN INTERVENES
A Breakdown from Overwork—Health Permanently Impaired—Appointment of a Royal Commission on the Poor Law—Saving the Unemployed Bill—Need of Money to Work the Bill—Mrs. Crooks heads the Women's March to Whitehall—Mr. Balfour's Sympathetic but Unsatisfactory Reply—Queen Alexandra's Intervention—A Vote of Money in the New Parliament.
The labour and anxiety, the long arduous days and the sleepless nights Crooks endured that winter for the unemployed, culminated in a sudden and serious illness.
The attack was short, but dangerous. His doctor reported that unless a change took place within a few hours it would be a case for confinement to bed for at least three months. Fortunately, the welcome change came.
A few days before he took to his bed he got a severe shaking by a fall while jumping off a 'bus in the Strand. That was not the cause of his illness, however. The real cause, as his medical man declared, was nervous breakdown due to overwork. His overwork had all been in the direction of trying to get work for the unemployed.
He fretted himself into a worse condition during the first few days of his illness. Every night, instead of sleeping, he was mentally putting hosts of unemployed men to work.
The sympathy and affection shown during his illness by his neighbours at Poplar affected him deeply. All day long callers of all sorts and conditions were making inquiries and leaving messages of good-will. Labourers, mechanics, widows, children, tradesmen, public men, officials, Free Church ministers, Anglican clergymen, Roman Catholic priests, and Sisters of the Poor were among those who came to the door once the news leaked out that the man from their midst, whom they had so often delighted to honour, lay sick and in danger. Their sympathy was intensified by the knowledge that Mrs. Crooks herself had not wholly recovered from a serious operation that had kept her for weeks in hospital.
That breakdown shattered him for life. He has never been the same in health since, and knows he can never be the same again. Sometimes for weeks together he endures agonising nervous pains, deprived of sleep and rest, yet all the time steadily refusing to slacken his labours for those whom he is fond of calling "the people at our end of the town."
As soon as he was able to get out again in the New Year (1905), he took up the case for the unemployed, if not with all his former zeal, certainly with all the zeal he could then command.
Towards the end of January he had so far recovered as to be able to attend the Liverpool Conference of the Labour Representation Committee. He was then in a position to make public for the first time that the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament in the following month would in all likelihood promise an Unemployed Bill. On his motion the Conference decided:
That the policy of the Labour Party in Parliament relating to unemployment should be to secure fuller powers for the local authorities to acquire and use land, to re-organise the local administrative machinery for dealing with poverty and unemployment, to bring pressure on the Government to put the recommendations of the Afforestation Committee into effect, to undertake forthwith, through the Board of Trade, the reclamation of foreshores, and to create a Labour Ministry.
His forecast of the King's Speech proved correct. An Unemployed Bill was promised. It was introduced on April 18th by Mr. Gerald Balfour, who had succeeded Mr. Long at the Local Government Board. The Bill confirmed Mr. Long's scheme of Distress Committees in London, and provided for the formation of similar bodies in provincial towns. It granted the principle of State aid by permitting the cost of organisation, including the provision of farm colonies, to be charged to the rates, leaving it to voluntary subscriptions to provide a fund for paying the men's wages.
That Session was made memorable to Crooks in another sense. A Royal Commission on the Poor Law was appointed, and although it was little faith he had in Commissions generally, he believed that, whatever came of the recommendations of this one, it would help the people of England to see, while its investigations were going on, something of the cruelty and folly of a system which had been ruthlessly thrust upon the voteless labouring people by the middle class individualists who came into power after the Reform Act of 1832. His fellow Guardian, George Lansbury, was appointed a member of the Commission—a notable compliment to Poplar, which for a dozen years had striven to make this soulless system humane and helpful.
Although the Unemployed Bill passed second reading with a majority of 217, the Session dragged wearily on with little prospect of its getting through the Committee stage and becoming law. When August dawned and the House found itself within a week of adjournment, everyone but Crooks despaired of getting the measure through. The Prime Minister told the House there was no time for the Bill. Several of Crooks's Labour colleagues declared the Bill to be too meagre a thing to fight for.
"I admit its faults and shortcomings as readily as anyone," he argued with his Party; "but it contains the germ of a great principle—State recognition of the need and State aid in carrying out the organisation."
Almost alone he fought for the Bill in the last days of the Session. He urged the Government to save the unemployed from foolish and useless rioting by holding out to them the hope which the passing of the Bill would convey.
By a dramatic coincidence, on the very afternoon he was thus warning the Government the police were charging a crowd of desperate unemployed in Manchester.
"The Prime Minister urges the plea that there is no time," Crooks went on to tell the House. "What would the business men of this House think, when they went down to their offices to-morrow, if they were told by the manager that grouse-shooting would begin on the Twelfth and that therefore business would have to be suspended? Does the Government prefer grouse-shooting to finding work for honest men? Was this Bill of theirs only introduced to kill time—to wait until the birds were big enough to be shot? I don't want to stop your holidays. Go and kill your grouse and your partridges. But are you going to put dead birds before living men?
"There was the day on which the Eton and Harrow match was played. What will the unemployed say when they hear that the Government could not find time to discuss this Bill because Ministers wished to see two schools play cricket? Do you think the working man gets a day off to see his sons play cricket in the public parks? Unlike many hon. members of this House, workmen do not live by dividends. They have nothing to sell but their labour. When out of work a little help often saves them from ruin and pauperism. They are only asking to be given an opportunity to fulfil the Divine curse by earning their living in the sweat of their brow."
His appeal went home. The following day the Government sprang a surprise on the House. The Bill would be taken that week. It was passed within a few days. "H. W. M.," in his parliamentary sketch in the Daily News of August 5th, referring to what he called "the strange story of the passing of the Unemployed Bill," said:
At the end of last week its chances seemed to have disappeared. To-day it has passed Committee, and Monday will see it through the Commons. The Member chiefly responsible for this issue is Mr. Crooks, who has shown undoubted subtleness as a Parliamentary tactician.
In his final speech on the Bill, Crooks argued that even the loafer would become a better man by being given, not the charity that demoralised, but a day's work for a day's pay. Such a man, by being put on a farm colony for a few months, would be turned into a good citizen. He stood for discipline in Labour as the Government stood for discipline in the Army and Navy. He wanted to preserve the manhood of the nation rather than to see it degraded, as it was by the present system of despising an unemployed man. The type of men who hung idle about all our large towns was the type that filled the workhouses and prisons. Take them in their early stages of unemployment, put them under proper discipline on the land, and he was prepared to prophesy they would become useful citizens. It was a loss to the nation that men and women should be going about without the common necessaries owing to being out of work.
So the Bill went through, and people of all classes agree with his old friend, Mr. A. F. Hills, a large employer, who wrote to him a letter on the subject, ending with the words: "I believe that generations yet unborn will in the years to come rise up and call you blessed."
In the opinion of many people well able to gauge the distress and discontent of the country, the Act came just in time to prevent serious disorders in the large towns. For the winter that immediately followed found the unemployed in a worse plight than ever.
Promptly the Distress Committees formed under the Act got to work. The London Committees found themselves at first stranded for funds. The weak point in the Act was that which allowed only the expense of organisation to be made a public charge. The Committees found themselves asking, What was the use of organising work for the unemployed when there were no means of paying wages? It looked as though public subscriptions were not to be forthcoming. Was the Act, so hardly won, to fail on its first trial?
Again Poplar fought the cause of the poor for the whole country. This time the workless men's wives took action. The women of Poplar met in the Town Hall, Mrs. Crooks in the chair, with the object of urging Parliament to vote money to the Distress Committees set up under the new Act.
Mrs. Crooks, as reported in the Times, said:
They were endeavouring to enlist the help and sympathy of those in high places to give some little time to the consideration of the claims of the wives and children of men who were willing to work, but who were unable to find the wherewithal to feed those near and dear to them. The Queen had more than once shown her desire to help. Was it, then, too much to expect that their wealthy sisters would use their influence with their all-too-powerful husbands to appeal, with the women of Poplar, to the King and Government to call Parliament together with a view to passing estimates to enable work to be undertaken—work that would give them their daily bread? Theirs was a cry for national defence, and Parliament must see to it.
The meeting decided to petition the King to instruct the Prime Minister to call Parliament together. In acknowledging a vote of thanks to his wife for taking the chair, Crooks said the mothers and sisters had remained too long indoors, suffering in silence. If the King could see that meeting it would make him realise what unemployment meant to the wives and mothers of his industrial army, and he would no doubt do something to ensure that they should not lack the sustenance needed to bring up strong daughters and strong sons as faithful and loyal citizens. They had got the machinery, and they had got certain powers, but they needed funds. They had got an organisation that could gather up all the information as to useful work that needed doing—work that would be profitable and inspiring to the men who did it, instead of being degrading, like the foolish and useless and expensive task-work which was all the Poor Law had to offer.
Mr. & Mrs. WILL CROOKS
Photo: G. Dendry.
About a month later took place the memorable women's march to Whitehall. The day, November 6th, was truly a tragic and historic one in the social life of London.
Headed by Mrs. Crooks and the then Mayoress of Poplar (Mrs. Dalton), some six thousand poor women gathered on the Thames Embankment, near Charing Cross Bridge, and marched to the offices of the Local Government Board in order to back up their appeal to the Premier to aid their out-of-work husbands and brothers. The women came not only from Poplar, where the march had been organised by George Lansbury, but from Edmonton, Paddington, West Ham, Woolwich, and Southwark. Some carried infants in arms; others had children dragging at their skirts.
"Work for our men—Bread for our children." So ran the appeal on the banner that floated above the Southwark contingent, led by Mrs. Herbert Stead.
The Embankment was deep in mud, and, as the women trudged bravely through it—those carrying babies unable to save their skirts from dragging in the road—the scene was one that filled you with an indignant shame. Even those other women in motors and carriages, who had driven down to see the sight out of curiosity, sank back into their cushions aghast, sickened, ashamed at this spectacle of their sisters' plight.
In Whitehall the processionists told off a dozen of their number to form the deputation to Mr. Balfour. The women were accompanied into the Local Government Board offices by Crooks and Lansbury and two or three other men from the Central Workers' Unemployed Committee.
The object of the visit was explained by Lansbury, and then a working woman from Poplar read the women's memorial. The memorial spoke of the misery, degradation, and desperation of the women which had driven them to determine to bear their lot in silence no longer. They thought that Parliament should make it impossible for unscrupulous employers to grind the faces of the poor. The Government had gone to the aid of the tenantry of Ireland. The plight of the poor in London was worse. If war were threatened, ways would be found for raising money. The country was faced with a worse evil than war in the presence of starving citizens. In the name of their country, their homes, and their children, they appealed to the Prime Minister not to send them empty away.
Several of the workless men's wives who, it had been arranged, should speak broke down; so Mrs. Crooks explained they had not come to utter words only; they had come as Englishwomen, driven to despair, in the hope that the Premier, as the chief Minister of the King, would no longer leave them in a worse condition than that of his dogs and horses.
Mr. Balfour was sympathetic, but had nothing to suggest. He saw no hope of Parliament voting money. The deputation came away sullen and disappointed. For the time it looked as though the women's march had been in vain. But, before a week passed, another woman spoke. The need was met by Queen Alexandra. On November 13th her Majesty issued her famous appeal:
"I appeal to all charitably disposed people in the Empire, both men and women, to assist me in alleviating the suffering of the poor starving unemployed during this winter. For this purpose I head the list with £2,000."
Before the winter was over the public, in response to this appeal, subscribed £150,000—a sum that proved sufficient that winter to keep Distress Committees going in London and elsewhere during the time of greatest privation.
The needs of the next winter were provided for by the State. The new Liberal Government had not been in office many months before it voted £200,000 to the Distress Committees appointed under the Unemployed Act.
Poplar had done its work. The women had marched to victory.