CHAPTER XXXI THE REVIVAL OF BUMBLEDOM
Crooks's Poor Law Policy Attacked—How a Local Government Board Inquiry was Conducted—Crooks's Mistake in Remaining Chairman of the Board of Guardians—The Inspector's Report—Why the Poor Die rather than go to Poplar Workhouse.
It is easy to understand that the humane spirit Crooks had infused into Poor Law administration, and the fact of his having made the State recognise a duty to the unemployed, was not acceptable to the old order of Poor Law administrators, nor to some of the officials of the Local Government Board.
When Crooks entered upon Poor Law work he found it bound hand and foot by red tape. The men elected by the people did not rule at all. They were little more than the servants of paid officials, whether in the person of Bumble in the workhouse or of Bumble at the Local Government Board.
We have seen how he fought against Bumble administration, and how successive Presidents of the Local Government Board lent him their support. Mr. Ritchie, at the request of Poplar, reduced the qualification for Guardians. Sir Henry Fowler abolished it, and, again at Poplar's request, deprived workhouse masters of the power to refuse admission to Guardians. Mr. Henry Chaplin ordered "workhouse comforts" and "adequate out-relief." Mr. Walter Long improved the dietary scale and formed the Central Unemployed Committee. Mr. Gerald Balfour passed the Unemployed Act.
All these reforms were more or less unwelcome to Bumbledom. One can understand how impatiently those who stood for the old harsh order of things waited for an opportunity to break into revolt. Their opportunity came in June, 1906, at the Local Government Board Inquiry into Poplar's Poor Law administration.
Crooks, who was still Chairman, courted the fullest and most open investigation. Directly he heard that the Poplar Municipal Alliance was making charges against the Guardians to the Local Government Board, he appealed for a public Inquiry.
On the opening day of the public Inquiry at Poplar Crooks and his colleague George Lansbury felt it to be their duty to protest against its being conducted by an Inspector who, they alleged, had his verdict in his pocket. They wished to make no reflection upon the Inspector's personal integrity, but they declared then and afterwards that it appeared to them to be "quite unjust to appoint so extreme an opponent of their policy to conduct the inquiry."
For fifteen out of the twenty days that the inquiry lasted the Inspector allowed the Municipal Alliance practically to direct the proceedings. They did their best to discredit Crooks's Poor Law policy on account of the malpractices of some of his colleagues, of which, up to then, owing to the pressure of his other public duties, he had been ignorant.
The Inspector, whose knowledge might have taught him how far from true many of the innuendoes were, made no attempt to stop them. He appeared to think it quite right to allow statements to go forth to the public that paupers were being fed on all kinds of delicacies, and that serviettes, pocket handkerchiefs, and outfits for girls going to service were for the use of the ordinary inmates of the workhouse.
The public did not know at the time that the "Linen Collars for Workhouse Inmates," blazoned forth in the Press as an example of Poplar's extravagance, were simply what were supplied to the boys in the school, that they too, like the girls, might go out into the world no longer branded, but self-respecting.
All through the Inquiry the public was given to understand that Poplar was an example of what happens under Labour administration. Since the two most prominent Guardians, Crooks and Lansbury, were known everywhere as Labour leaders, the whole Board was wrongly supposed to consist of their followers. In reality, out of a Board of twenty-four members only ten were Labour representatives, and not half of these Socialists. The majority of the Guardians were Conservatives and Liberals.
The policy of Crooks and Lansbury did to a large extent dominate the Board, due no doubt to their ability and personal magnetism. But between the policy of these two men and the administration of certain of their colleagues lay a gulf that neither the Inspector nor the Press seemed to see at the time. These two were held responsible for certain faults of administration committed by individual members of the Board belonging to the Liberal and Conservative parties. They were actually held up to reproach and ridicule for faults and follies committed by colleagues who had bitterly opposed their policy at every step.
The Inquiry taught Crooks his mistake in consenting to remain Chairman of the Board after his election to Parliament. We have seen that his consent to remain was given reluctantly, and on the understanding that he should devote less time to the work. He little thought that some of those who pressed him to stay would take advantage of his relaxed attention to bring discredit on the Board's administration. He therefore seized an early opportunity in the succeeding year of resigning the office, informing the Board by word of mouth, and the people of Poplar by circular letter, that in doing so, owing to the press of other public duties, he did not propose to abandon in the smallest way any part of that policy of Poor Law reform to which the best years of his public life had been devoted. He also publicly declared in Poplar repeatedly that he would do his best to expose and turn out of public life any person guilty of corruption, and even while the Inquiry was going on he appealed to the Inspector more than once to order a prosecution of suspected Guardians and contractors.
After the dust and din caused by the Municipal Alliance had died down, that body found itself largely discredited in Poplar. One of its members wrote to the Press:—
Over this Inquiry we have already made many enemies.... It would be difficult to define what the Alliance set out to do, but the methods employed in doing it were, to say the least, unworthy....
I did not think, when we embarked on this expensive trip, that we were going to attempt to cover with ridicule men who, it must be admitted, have devoted a considerable portion of their time to the affairs of the Union, and are now proved to have been thoroughly honest in their policy.
The Alliance was to receive a heavier blow from the Poplar people. To them an insult to Crooks was an insult to Poplar. The Borough Council Elections followed soon after the Inquiry, the Alliance throwing all its weight into the local campaign. In nearly all the other London boroughs the Progressives and Labour men were badly beaten. In Poplar the Labour Party went back larger in numbers and backed by a stronger vote of the electors than they had ever had before. Lansbury defeated the Chairman of the Alliance.
"That," said Crooks at the time, in an interview in one of the daily papers, "is the answer of the people of Poplar to the slanders and misrepresentations levelled against me. The people of Poplar know the truth about my policy, whatever may have been the shortcomings of some of my colleagues; the people of London do not know—they only have the Yellow Press version."
Again, when a few weeks later the triennial election for the London County Council took place, the people of Poplar stood by their Labour member. Progressive and Labour seats fell all over London in March, 1907, but Crooks was re-elected for Poplar at the top of the poll with 3,504 votes, though the Alliance strained every nerve to oust him.
Then it was that his outside accusers began to suspect they had been misled. Here was a prophet in his own country indeed—accused and slandered outside, but trusted and honoured by his neighbours. And when a month later the election of Guardians took place, and Poplar, put to a third test, declared more emphatically than ever for the Crooks policy by defeating about two-thirds of the Alliance candidates and electing an increased number of Labour men, the eyes of the public were opened.
But the revival of Bumbledom was not yet at an end. The Local Government Board Inspector's report came out three and a half months after the inquiry closed. The unusual course was followed of publishing it before the evidence. When the evidence did appear it disproved many of the Inspector's conclusions.
The Inspector was bound to say there was no reflection upon the "personal integrity of Mr. Crooks and Mr. Lansbury."
While deprecating the standard of comfort in the workhouse, the Inspector made no reference to the doctor's statement that he did not think the inmates were too well fed or clad. Rather, he tried to undermine Crooks's policy by remarks of this kind:—
Mr. Crooks in his evidence admitted that the dietary in the workhouse was better than could be obtained by the independent labourer in the borough with a wife and two children to keep who received anything under 30s. a week.
The evidence gives a different version. What Crooks said (page 389) was:—
"A man with 30s. a week with a wife and two children can only just keep himself in decency. When he gets below that he gets below the Local Government Board diet.... The men in the workhouse get a bare subsistence, and no man outside ought to be paid wages less than enable him to get that kind of living. What you have to prove is that we are giving the people in the workhouse such luxury as a man in ordinary work at from thirty to forty shillings a week could not get at home. But what he" [the legal representative of the Municipal Alliance] "does not say is that we are dealing with the very aged in the workhouse—the able-bodied, as you know, are exceedingly limited in number—but he does not appreciate for a moment that after all a man's liberty is worth something. Liberty has not fallen in value. It is a priceless something. A man will die for it. And our people will die—a good many of them—rather than go into the workhouse."
It happened that the people of Poplar were dying for it about that very time. While the Local Government Board was harassing Crooks for his efforts to save the poor from starvation, another Department of the State was in correspondence with the Guardians over two cases of people who had died from starvation in Poplar. This was the Home Office.
It is a theory of the British Constitution that no person in the kingdom should die of starvation. Yet in London alone forty-eight people died of starvation in the winter of 1905-6. Whitechapel, which gives no out-relief, and is held up as a model by the Inspector who conducted the Poplar inquiry, had ten deaths from starvation within its borders during the year. Poplar, where the Guardians are said to be too generous in their treatment of the poor, was unable, with all its zeal, to prevent two people dying from want of food.
One of the victims was a child whose father refused to go into Poplar workhouse—this so-called "palace of luxury"—because he thought he might still be able to earn a trifle outside. Out-relief in the way of food was given to the value of 3s. 6d. a week, but that not being enough for a family of five, the youngest defied the British Constitution by quietly slipping into the grave—"Died of asthenia and bronchitis," was the coroner's verdict, "due to mother's want of food, accelerated by want of proper clothing."
Shortly afterwards a married labourer in Old Ford, faced with starvation, refused to apply to the Poplar Guardians because it had become common talk among the poor of the district that the Local Government Board would no longer allow the Guardians to assist people outside the workhouse. And one morning this unemployed man had to run to the nearest doctor's because one of his children was "took queer." What followed was told by the doctor in evidence a few days later at the Poplar Coroner's Court. He related how he was knocked up in the early morning, and how, when he went to the house, he found no sign of food, no fire, and, lying on some scanty bedding, a girl-child, who had been dead about an hour. Death, he added, was due to exhaustion from want of sufficient food. He was so shocked with the poverty of the home that he gave the parents five shillings out of his own pocket, and sent them something to eat.