THE SLUMP IN MANNERS
Mr. Asquith: "He wouldn't have stood this kind of thing. I wonder whether I ought."
On the much-vexed question of Chinese Labour, Punch sided against its critics, and his cartoons in 1906 represent Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman forcing unwelcome freedom on the Chinese coolie. Ignorance of Imperial questions on the part of the Labour Party is a frequent theme of comment. In the same year we find an article describing an imaginary tour in the Colonies by Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Philip Snowden. Mr. Keir Hardie spent two months in India in 1907, and the reports of his speeches, which he declared to be gross exaggerations and fabrications, led to vehement protests in the British Press. His biographer states that "for a full fortnight Keir Hardie was the most violently detested man throughout the English-speaking world. Even Punch joined in the vituperation with a cartoon by Linley Sambourne, which showed Britannia gripping the agitator by the scruff of the neck and apostrophizing him: 'Here, you'd better come home. We know all about you there, and you'll do less harm.'" Punch's adverse comments were not merely pictorial, and though Mr. Keir Hardie laid himself open to criticism by his angularity, his vanity and such remarks as "India to-day is governed by a huge military oligarchy," his courage and sincerity passed unrecognized.
Strikes and trade depression furnish themes for comment in 1908. In one cartoon Trade is shown as a lean and ill-favoured goose that has lost confidence in herself; in another, an engineer going back to work after seven months' stoppage, meets a cotton-spinning girl just coming out, and is credited with the admission that his action has done no good to himself or anyone else.
In 1909-1910 the conflict between Lords and Commons over the Budget proposals overshadowed all other home issues. It even became a subject of debate at preparatory schools, and Punch quotes a bonâ fide letter from a boy of nine: "We had two debates yesterday about the Budget being rejected. I was against the Budget, but the ones who were for it won, because just about half the ones who were against it had to go away for their prayers." Mr. Lloyd George was now the champion and hero of the democracy, for this was the year of the famous Limehouse speech and its sequel at Newcastle, where he referred to the House of Lords as "500 ordinary men, chosen accidentally from the unemployed." Dukes were handled almost as roughly as by Punch in the 'forties, and "robber-barons" were held up to obloquy. Punch resented this wholesale vituperation, and indulged in some effective reprisals in his criticism of trade union indiscipline, notably the growing tendency towards unofficial and lightning strikes. Thus, in 1910, he published a cartoon showing a trade union official lying prostrate in the road, overthrown and left behind by a crowd marching under a banner inscribed "Down with Authority." The comments on the payment of Members in the same year imply that trade unions were hostile to a change which impaired their control. The State might pay M.P.s, but the trade unions must call the tune. Nor was Punch favourably impressed by the Government's scheme of Insurance against Unemployment, which, in his forecast, would only encourage the existing reluctance to work.
Constituent (referring to M.P. speaking in market-place): "It's the likes of hus that 'as to pay him £400 a year. It makes me that wild to think as we could 'ave two first-class 'arf-backs for the same money."
Claims for "Recognition"
Throughout 1911 and 1912 the claims of the new Trade Unionism met with little sympathy. "Look here, my friend," says John Bull of the "New Volunteer Police" to a Trade Union leader: "I've been hearing a good deal of talk of 'recognition.' Well, I represent the public, and it's about time my interests were 'recognized.'" A month later, in October, 1911, an "imported agitator" is shown talking to his comrade as they watch the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Sydney Buxton) nailing up a notice of the new Government Conciliation Scheme, with Sir George Askwith as chairman of the Industrial Council. "Don't be down-hearted," he observes. "Let's hope we shall be able to make as much trouble as before." This was apportioning the responsibility for failure in advance; but unfortunately failure there was. Punch's frontispiece to 1912 is the "tug of war" of Labour and Capital. The coal crisis was again acute in February, but in its opening stages Punch's hostility was chiefly displayed against the coal merchant, who was against strikes, but the more they were threatened the better it suited his book. Punch derived a certain malicious satisfaction from the spectacle of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's exclusion from the coal conference; but recognized that the final arbiter was not this or that leader or statesman but Famine. The thorny question of "blackleg" labour having again emerged, Punch asserted the right of the community in no uncertain terms. John Bull declares that he can't make the striker work, if he won't; but if others want to, he can and will make the striker let them. This strike introduced a new figure into Punch's portrait gallery; "Prince Petroleo" being introduced for the first time as a possible "second string" and rival of the hitherto indispensable King Coal. But such light-hearted treatment is henceforth rarely found in the treatment of industrial troubles. By the summer John Bull is seen on the edge of the crater of Labour unrest, listening vainly for any reassuring voices from its depths. The methods of the Trade Unionist are contrasted with those of Justice: he is all for striking first and arguing afterwards. The threat of a general strike was heard in June, but Punch remained sceptical as to the response. Agitators might call spirits from the vasty deep; but there would be no answer. In 1913 Dublin, for the first time in its long and chequered career, became the chief focus of industrial unrest in the British Isles, for this was the year of the strike of the Dublin transport workers, and the emergence, in the person of the notorious Jim Larkin, of a super-agitator of the most strenuous type. Strange things were done in the name of Liberty Hall—his headquarters—Mr. Birrell's absenteeism having become chronic, not to say conspicuous. Larkin was arrested and imprisoned, but released with a rapidity which reduced the penalty to a farce; and the assaults on the Dublin police during the strike riots in the winter were sufficiently severe to excuse Mr. Punch for calling their assailants the "be-labouring classes."
Labour Members in Transition