As a Dreadnought reporter, I had been instructed to pay little attention to the official leaders, but to seek out any significant rank-and-filers and play them up in my story. I was taken up by delegates from the Rhondda Valley in South Wales, which was the extreme leftist element of the Miners' Federation. One of them, A.J. Cook, was exceptionally friendly and gave me interesting information about the British Labor movement. He was very proud that it was the most powerful in the world and included every class of worker. He said he believed the labor movement was the only hope for Negroes because they were in the lowest economic group. He pointed out that J.R. Clynes' General Union of Workers consisted of the lowest class of people (domestic servants and porters and hotel workers) and yet it was extremely important in the councils of the Trades Union Congress.
At that time I could not imagine Cook becoming a very influential official. He was extremely loquacious, but his ideas were an odd mix-up of liberal sentiment and socialist thought, and sentimental to an extreme. He was also a parson, and divided his time between preaching and the pit. However, the radical miners told me they were going to push Cook forward to take the place of Hodges, whom they could no longer stomach. And sure enough, in a few brief years Cook became the radical secretary of the Miners' Federation.
But the labor official at the Congress who carried me away with him was Robert Smillie, the president of the Miners' Federation. Crystal Eastman had given me a note to him and he had said a few wise words to me about the necessity of colored labor being organized, especially in the vast European colonies, for the betterment of its own living standard and to protect that of white organized labor. Smillie was like a powerful ash which had forced itself up, coaxing nourishment out of infertile soil, and towering over saplings and shrubs. His face and voice were so terribly full of conviction that in comparison the colleagues around him appeared theatrical. When he stood forth to speak the audience was shot through with excitement, and subdued. He compelled you to think along his line whether or not you agreed with him. I remember his passionate speech for real democracy in the Congress, advocating proportional representation and pointing out that on vital issues the united Miners' Federation was often outvoted by a nondescript conglomeration like J.R. Clynes' General Union of Workers for example. You felt that Smillie had convinced the Congress, but when the vote was taken it went against him.
I wrote my article on the Trades Union Congress around Smillie because his personality and address were more significant in my opinion than any rank-and-filer's. It was featured on the front page of the Dreadnought. But when Pankhurst returned from Russia, she sharply reproved me for it, saying that it wasn't the policy of the Dreadnought to praise the official labor leaders, but to criticize them. Naturally, I resented the criticism, especially as Pankhurst had suppressed my article on Lansbury.
Just before leaving for the Trade Union Congress I was introduced to a young English sailor named Springhall. He was a splendid chap. He had been put into the British navy as a boy and had developed into a fine man, not merely physically, but intellectually. Springhall was a constant reader of the Dreadnought and other social propaganda literature and he said that other men on his ship were eager for more stuff about the international workers' movement. At that time there was a widespread discontent and desire for better wages among the rank and file of the navy. Springhall came to the Dreadnought publishing office in the Old Ford Road and we gave him many copies of the Dreadnought. The Dreadnought was legally on sale on the newsstands, so he had the legal right to take as many as he desired. Before he left he promised to send me some navy news for the paper.
When I returned to London I found a letter from the young sailor, Springhall, with some interesting items for the paper and the information that he was sending an article. The article arrived in a few days and it was a splendid piece of precious information. But its contents were so important and of such a nature that I put it away and waited for Pankhurst to return and pass it.
Pankhurst returned late in September. I turned over Springhall's document to her. She was enthusiastic, edited the document, and decided to give it the front page. We used a nom de plume and a fictitious name for a battleship. Only Pankhurst and myself knew who the author was. The intelligence of the stuff was so extraordinary that she did not want to risk having the youth's identity discovered by the authorities. And she thought he could serve the social cause more excellently by remaining at his post.
A couple of days after the issue appeared, the Dreadnought office was raided by the police. I was just going out, leaving the little room on the top floor where I always worked, when I met Pankhurst's private secretary coming upstairs. She whispered that Scotland Yard was downstairs. Immediately I thought of Springhall's article and I returned to my room, where I had the original under a blotter. Quickly I folded it and stuck it in my sock. Going down, I met a detective coming up. They had turned Pankhurst's office upside down and descended to the press-room, without finding what they were looking for.
"And what are you?" the detective asked.