Soon after I became associated with the Workers' Dreadnought, a sawmill strike broke out in London. Most of the sawmills were in the East End, where also the publishing office of the Dreadnought was located. One mill was directly opposite the Dreadnought office. I was assigned to do an article on the strike. A few of the sawmill workers were sympathetic to the Dreadnought organization, and one of the younger of them volunteered to take me round.
There were some sixty sawmills in London, one of the most important of which was either owned or partly controlled by George Lansbury, Labor Member of Parliament and managing editor of the Daily Herald. Some of the strikers informed me that the Lansbury mill had in its employ some workers who were not members of the sawmill union and who were not striking. Technically, such workers were scabs. The strikers thought it would make an excellent story for the militant Dreadnought. So did I.
The name of Lansbury was symbolic of all that was simon-pure, pious and self-righteous in the British Labor movement. As the boss of the Daily Herald, he stood at the center like an old bearded angel of picturesque honesty, with his right arm around the neck of the big trade-union leaders and Parliamentarians and his left waving to the Independent Labor partyites and all the radical Left. Like a little cat up against a big dog, the Workers' Dreadnought was always spitting at the Daily Herald.
I thought the story would give the Dreadnought some more fire to spit. Here was my chance for getting even with the Daily Herald for its black-scourge-in-Europe campaign. Comrade Vie helped me put some ginger into my article. When I showed the article to Miss Smyth, the upper-middle-class person who was Pankhurst's aid, she gasped and said: "But this is a scoop." Her gentle-lady poker face was lit as she read.
Finally the article reached Sylvia Pankhurst. She summoned me and said: "Your article is excellent but I'm so sorry we cannot print it." "Why?" I asked. "Because," said she, "we owe Lansbury twenty pounds. Besides, I have borrowed paper from the Daily Herald to print the Dreadnought. I can't print that."
It is possible that Miss Pankhurst acted more from a feeling of personal loyalty. Although Lansbury was centrist and she was extreme leftist, they were personal friends, ever since they had been associated in the suffrage cause. And after all, one might concede that there are items which the capitalist press does not consider fit to print for capitalist reasons, and items which the radical press does not consider fit to print for radical reasons.
That summer Sylvia Pankhurst made the underground trip to Russia to attend the Second Congress of the Third International.
Early in September, 1920, I was sent down to Portsmouth to report the Trades Union Congress for the Dreadnought. There were gathered at the Congress some of the leaders who later became members of the British Labor Government: J.H. Thomas, J.R. Clynes, Arthur Henderson, A.A. Purcell, Herbert Morrison, Frank Hodges, and Margaret Bonfield. The most picturesque personage of them all was Frank Hodges, the secretary of the Miners' Federation, who in his style and manner appeared like a representative of the nobility. I mentioned this to A.J. Cook, who was a minor official of the Federation, and he informed me that Hodges was always hunting foxes with the lords.
At the press table I met Scott Nearing, who, after listening to clever speeches by the labor leaders, whispered to me that England would soon be the theater of the next revolution. The speeches were warm; Labor was feeling its strength in those times. Even J.H. Thomas was red, at least in the face, about Winston Churchill, who had declared that "Labor was not fit to govern."