Britain for the British

by Robert Blatchford

CHAPTER XVIII WHY THE OLD PARTIES WILL NOT DO

The old parties are no use to Labour for two reasons:—

1. Because their interests are mostly opposed to the interests of Labour.

2. Because such reform as they promise is mostly political, and the kind of reform needed by Labour is industrial and social reform.

Liberal and Tory politicians call us Socialists dreamers. They claim to be practical men. They say theories are no use, that reform can only be secured by practical men and practical means, and for practical men and practical means you must look to the great parties.

Being anxious to catch even the faintest streak of dawn in the dreary political sky, we do look to the great parties. I have been looking to them for quite twenty years. And nothing has come of it.

What can come of it? What are the "practical" reforms about which we hear so much?

Putting the broadest construction upon them, it may be said that the practical politics of both parties are within the lines of the following programme:—

1. Manhood Suffrage.
2. Payment of Members of Parliament.
3. Payment of Election Expenses.
4. The Second Ballot.
5. Abolition of Dual Voting.
6. Disestablishment of the Church.
7. Abolition of the House of Lords.

And it is alleged by large numbers of people, all of them, for some inexplicable reason, proud of their hard common sense, that the passing of this programme into law would, in some manner yet to be expounded, make miserable England into merry England, and silence the visionaries and agitators for ever.

Now, with all deference and in all humility, I say to these practical politicians that the above programme, if it became law to-morrow, would not, for any practical purpose, be worth the paper it was printed on.

There are seven items, and not one of them would produce the smallest effect upon the mass of misery and injustice which is now crushing the life out of this nation.

No. All those planks are political planks, and they all amount to the same thing—the shifting of political power from the classes to the masses. The idea being that when the people have the political power they will use it to their own advantage.

A false idea. The people would not know how to use the power, and if they did know how to use it, it by no means follows that they would use it.

Some of the real evils of the time, the real causes of England's distress, are:—

1. The unjust monopoly of the land.
2. The unjust extortion of interest.
3. The universal system of suicidal competition.
4. The baseness of popular ideals.
5. The disorganisation of the forces for the production of wealth.
6. The unjust distribution of wealth.
7. The confusions and contradictions of the moral ethics of the nation, with resultant unjust laws and unfair conditions of life.

There I will stop. Against the seven remedies I will put seven evils, and I say that not one of the remedies can cure any one of the evils.

The seven remedies will give increased political power to the people. So. But, assuming that political power is the one thing needful, I say the people have it now.

Supposing the masses in Manchester were determined to return to Parliament ten working men. They have an immense preponderance of votes. They could carry the day at every poll? But do they? If not, why not?

Then, as to expenses. Assuming the cost to be £200 a member, that would make a gross sum of £2000 for ten members, which sum would not amount to quite fivepence a head for 100,000 voters. But do voters find this money? If not, why not?

Then, as to maintenance. Allowing each member £200 a year, that would mean another fivepence a year for the 100,000 men. So that it is not too much to say that, without passing one of the Acts in the seven-branched programme, the workers of Manchester could, at a cost of less than one penny a month per man, return and maintain ten working men Members of Parliament?

Now, my practical friends, how many working-class members sit for Manchester to-day?

And if the people, having so much power now, make no use of it, why are we to assume that all they need is a little more power to make them healthy, and wealthy, and wise?

But allow me to offer a still more striking example—the example of America.

In the first place, I assume that in America the electoral power of the people is much greater than it is here. I will give one or two examples. In America, I understand, they have:—

1. No Established Church.
2. No House of Lords.
3. Members of the Legislature are paid.
4. The people have Universal Suffrage.

There are four out of the seven branches of the practical politicians' programme in actual existence. For the other three—

The Abolition of Dual Voting;
The Payment of Election Expenses; and
The Second Ballot—

The Abolition of Dual Voting;
The Payment of Election Expenses; and
The Second Ballot—

I cannot answer; but these do not seem to have done quite as much for France as our practical men expect them to do for England.

Very well, America has nearly all that our practical politicians promise us. Is America, therefore, so much better off as to justify us in accepting the seven-branched programme as salvation?

Some years ago I read a book called How the Other Half Lives, written by an American citizen, and dealing with the conditions of the poor in New York.

We should probably be justified in assuming that just as London is a somewhat intensified epitome of England, so is New York of America; but we will not assume that much. We will look at this book together, and we will select a few facts as to the state of the people in New York, and then I will ask you to consider this proposition:—

1. That in New York the people already enjoy all the advantages of practical politics, as understood in England.

2. That, nevertheless, New York is a more miserable and vicious city than London.

3. That this seems to me to indicate that practical politics are hopeless, and that practical politicians are—not quite so wise as they imagine.

About thirty years ago there was a committee appointed in New York to investigate the "great increase in crime." The Secretary of the New York Prison Association, giving evidence, said:—

Eighty per cent. at least of the crimes against property and against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost connection with home life or never had any, or whose homes have ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and family.

The younger criminals seem to come almost exclusively from the worst tenement-house districts.

These tenements, it seems, are slums. Of the evil of these places, of the miseries of them, we shall hear more presently. Our author, Mr. Jacob A. Riis, asserts again and again that the slums make the disease, the crime, and the wretchedness of New York:—

In the tenements all the influences make for evil, because they are the hot-beds that carry death to rich and poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime, that fill our gaols and police-courts; that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year; that turned out, in the last eight years, a round half-million of beggars to prey upon our charities; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps, with all that that implies; because, above all, they touch the family life with moral contagion.

Well, that is what the American writer thinks of the tenement system—of the New York slums.

Now comes the important question, What is the extent of these slums? And on this point Mr. Riis declares more than once that the extent is enormous:—

To-day (1891) three-fourths of New York's people live in the tenements, and the nineteenth century drift of the population to the cities is sending ever-increasing multitudes to crowd them.

Where are the tenements of to-day? Say, rather, where are they not? In fifty years they have crept up from the Fourth Ward Slums and the Fifth Points, the whole length of the island, and have polluted the annexed district to the Westchester line. Crowding all the lower wards, where business leaves a foot of ground unclaimed; strung along both rivers, like ball and chain tied to the foot of every street, and filling up Harlem with their restless, pent-up multitudes, they hold within their clutch the wealth and business of New York—hold them at their mercy, in the day of mob-rule and wrath.

So much, then, for the extent of these slums. Now for the nature of them. A New York doctor said of some of them—

If we could see the air breathed by these poor creatures in their tenements, it would show itself to be fouler than the mud of the gutters.

And Mr. Riis goes on to tell of the police finding 101 adults and 91 children in one Crosby Street House, 150 "lodgers" sleeping "on filthy floors in two buildings."

But the most striking illustration I can give you of the state of the working-class dwellings in New York is by placing side by side the figures of the population per acre in the slums of New York and Manchester.

The Manchester slums are bad—disgracefully, sinfully bad—and the overcrowding is terrible. But referring to the figures I took from various official documents when I was writing on the Manchester slums a few years ago, I find the worst cases of overcrowding to be:—

	District.	Pop. per Acre.
Ancoats	No. 3	256
Deansgate	No. 2	266
London Road	No. 3	267
Hulme	No. 3	270
St. George's	No. 6	274

These are the worst cases from some of the worst English slums. Now let us look at the figures for New York—

Density of Population Per Acre in 1890
Tenth Ward	522
Eleventh Ward	386
Thirteenth Ward	428

The population of these three wards in the same year was over 179,000. The population of New York in 1890 was 1,513,501. In 1888 there were in New York 1,093,701 persons living in tenement houses.

Then, in 1889, there died in New York hospitals 6102; in lunatic asylums, 448; while the number of pauper funerals was 3815.

In 1890 there were in New York 37,316 tenements, with a gross population of 1,250,000.

These things are facts, and our practical politicians love facts.

But these are not all the facts. No. In this book about New York I find careful plans and drawings of the slums, and I can assure you we have nothing so horrible in all England. Nor do the revelations of Mr. Riis stop there. We have full details of the sweating shops, the men and women crowded together in filthy and noisome dens, working at starvation prices, from morning until late on in the night, "until brain and muscle break down together." We have pictures of the beggars, the tramps, the seamstresses, the unemployed, the thieves, the desperadoes, the lost women, the street arabs, the vile drinking and opium dens, and we have facts and figures to prove that this great capital of the great Republic is growing worse; and all this, my practical friends, in spite of the fact that in America they have

Manhood Suffrage;
Payment of Members;
No House of Peers;
No State Church; and
Free Education;

which is more than our most advanced politicians claim as the full extent to which England can be taken by means of practical politics—as understood by the two great parties.

Now, I want to know, and I shall be glad if some practical friend will tell me, whether a programme of practical politics which leaves the metropolis of a free and democratic nation a nest of poverty, commercial slavery, vice, crime, insanity, and disease, is likely to make the English people healthy, and wealthy, and wise? And I ask you to consider whether this seven-branched programme is worth fighting for, if it is to result in a density of slum population nearly twice as great as that of the worst districts of the worst slums of Manchester?

It seems to me, as an unpractical man, that a practical programme which results in 522 persons to the acre, 18 hours a day for bread and butter, and nearly 4000 pauper funerals a year in one city, is a programme which only very practical men would be fools enough to fight for.

At anyrate, I for one will have nothing to say to such a despicable sham. A programme which does not touch the sweater nor the slum; which does not hinder the system of fraud and murder called free competition; which does not give back to the English people their own country or their own earnings, may be good enough for politicians, but it is no use to men and women.

No, my lads, there is no system of economics, politics, or ethics whereby it shall be made just or expedient to take that which you have not earned, or to take that which another man has earned; there can be no health, no hope in a nation where everyone is trying to get more than he has earned, and is hocussing his conscience with platitudes about God's Providence having endowed men with different degrees of intellect and virtue.

How many years is it since the Newcastle programme was issued? What did it promise that the poor workers of America and France have not already obtained? What good would it do you if you got it? And when do you think you are likely to get it? Is it any nearer now than it was seven years ago? Will it be any nearer ten years hence than it is now if you wait for the practical politicians of the old parties to give it to you?

One of the great stumbling-blocks in the way of all progress for Labour is the lingering belief of the working man in the Liberal Party.

In the past the Liberals were regarded as the party of progress. They won many fiscal and political reforms for the people. And now, when they will not, or cannot, go any farther, their leaders talk about "ingratitude" if the worker is advised to leave them and form a Labour Party.

But when John Bright refused to go any farther, when he refused to go as far as Home Rule, did the Liberal Party think of gratitude to one of their greatest men? No. They dropped John Bright, and they blamed him because he had halted.

They why should they demand that you shall stay with them out of gratitude now they have halted?

The Liberal Party claim to be the workers' friends. What have they done for him during the last ten years? What are they willing to do for him now, or when they get office?

Here is a quotation from a speech made some years ago by Sir William Harcourt—

An attempt is being sedulously made to identify the Liberal Government and the Liberal Party with dreamers of dreams, with wild, anarchical ideas, and anti-social projects. Gentlemen, I say, if I have a right to speak on behalf of the Liberal Party, that we have no sympathy with these mischief-makers at all. The Liberal Party has no share in them; their policy is a constructive policy; they have no revolutionary schemes either in politics, in society, or in trade.

You may say that is old. Try this new one. It is from the lips of Mr. Harmsworth, the "official Liberal candidate" at the last by-election in North-East Lanark—

My own opinion is that a modus vivendi should be arrived at between the official Liberal Party and such Labour organisations as desire parliamentary representation, provided, of course, that they are not tainted with Socialist doctrines. It should not be difficult to come to something like an amicable settlement. I must say that it came upon me with something of a shock to find that amongst those who sent messages to the Socialist candidate wishing success to him in his propaganda were two Members of Parliament who profess allegiance to the Liberal Party.

Provided, "of course," that they are not tainted with Socialist doctrines. With Socialist doctrines Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Harmsworth will have no dealings.

Now, if you read what I have written in this book you will see that there is no possible reform that can do the workers any real or lasting good unless that reform is tainted with Socialist doctrines.

Only legislation of a socialistic nature can benefit the working class. And that kind of legislation the Liberals will not touch.

It is true there are some individual members amongst the Radicals who are prepared to go a good way with the Socialists. But what can they do? In the House they must obey the Party Whip, and the Party Whip never cracks for socialistic measures.

I wonder how many Labour seats have been lost through Home Rule. Time after time good Labour candidates have been defeated because Liberal working men feared to lose a Home Rule vote in the House.

And what has Labour got from the Home Rule Liberals it has elected?

And where is Home Rule to-day?

Let me give you a typical case. A Liberal Unionist lost his seat. He at once became a Home Ruler, and was adopted as Liberal candidate to stand against a Labour candidate and against a Tory. The Labour candidate was a Home Ruler, and had been a Home Ruler when the Liberal candidate was a Unionist.

But the Liberal working men would not vote for the Labour man. Why? Because they were afraid he would not get in. If he did not get in the Tory would get in, and the Home Rule vote would be one less in the House.

They voted for the Liberal, and he was returned. That is ten years ago. What good has that M.P. done for Home Rule, and what has he done for Labour?

The Labour man could have done no more for Home Rule, but he would have worked hard for Labour, and no Party Whip would have checked him.

Well, during those ten years it is not too much to say that fifty Labour candidates have been sacrificed in the same way to Home Rule.

In ten years those men would have done good service. And they were all Home Rulers.

Such is the wisdom of the working men who cling to the tails of the Liberal Party.

Return a hundred Labour men to the House of Commons, and the Liberal Party will be stronger than if a hundred Liberals were sent in their place, for there is not a sound plank in the Liberal programme which the Labour M.P. would wish removed.

But do you doubt for a moment that the presence in the House of a hundred Labour members would do no more for Labour than the presence in their stead of a hundred Liberals? A working man must be very dull if he believes that.

That is my case against the old parties. I could say no more if I tried. If you want to benefit your own class, if you want to hasten reform, if you want to frighten the Tories and wake up the Liberals, put your hands in your pockets, find a farthing a week for election and for parliamentary expenses, send a hundred Labour men to the House, and watch the effects. I think you will be more than satisfied. And that is what I call "practical politics."

Finally, to end as I began, if self-interest is the strongest motive in human nature, the man who wants his own advantage secured will be wise to attend to it himself.

The Liberal Party may be a better party than the Tory Party, but the best party for Labour is a Labour Party.

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