CHAPTER XXXII APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE
Crooks Appeals to the Public—"This Insult to the Poor"—Resentment all over the Country—A Voice from the Hungry 'Forties—Cheering Letters—A Government Department's Blunder—Poplar's Appeal to Crooks.
The day after the report of the Local Government Board Inspector was published, Crooks sent his decision upon it to the Press. He wrote from the House of Commons, where, as he stated in his letter, "the unfairness and injustice of the report in its bearings on my Poor Law policy are so far recognised that to-day I have been told by members of all parties that the report is not only wicked but brutal." He further stated in his letter to the Press:—
"Will you permit me to make it public through your columns that I accept the challenge thrown down in the Local Government Board report? Against all its strictures I intend to maintain my stand on that policy of humanising the Poor Law, to which I have given the greater part of my life. And in doing so I propose to appeal from the Local Government Board to the public.
"If the public upholds this insult to the poor I shall be painfully surprised. After twenty days of a searching inquiry, and after twice twenty pages of a strained attack on Mr. Lansbury and myself, there is nothing to show that we have done anything against the actual orders and regulations of the very Board that now rises in mock-heroic wrath to slay us. Our only crime is that we have humanised a system framed in 1834, when the voteless working classes were dragooned by a middle-class majority....
"My present duty is clear. The public may remember that at Mr. Chaplin's request I went as a nominee of the Local Government Board on the Metropolitan Asylums Board. It may remember that I was co-opted on the Central Unemployed Body on the suggestion of Mr. Walter Long. Now that the Local Government Board, under the new Government, has seen fit to attack me and my Labour colleagues, and to flout the poor as I venture to say they have never been flouted by that Department before, I can no longer hold those two positions. I propose to resign. Nor until its attitude towards the poor and the unemployed changes will I ever consent to represent the Local Government Board on any public body again. I prefer to represent the people....
"The faults of administration at Poplar, so grossly magnified in this report, are common to all such bodies, and Poplar will do its best to avoid them. But the policy will not change. By that we stand or fall."
The reason for that policy was briefly explained in a special report issued by the Poplar Guardians and signed by Crooks as Chairman. It formed part of the Board's reply to the Inspector's report. Thus:—
This policy was never put in force with the idea that it would lead to a reduction in rates or in the number applying for relief. No one imagines that decent treatment of the poor will choke off applicants in the manner that harsh treatment will, but we claim that under the Act of Elizabeth, the poor (not merely the destitute, but the poor) are entitled to come to society in time of need.
The State provides all kinds of services for the community, such as roads, sewers, light, police, army, navy, education, etc., and we all enjoy those privileges. The State pensions its well-paid Cabinet Ministers and officials; and we claim that the poor, whose charter is the 43rd of Elizabeth, instead of being penalised when needing help, should receive such help in an ungrudging measure and in a manner which would most effectively preserve their self-respect.
Finally, we would again repeat that our pauperism is due to our poverty, that our policy is based on the claims recognised by statute as the due right of the poor. We neither palliate nor excuse any lapses either on the part of members or officers of the Board, but we claim that as a Board we have carried out our duties as efficiently and as economically as we were able, that we have never given indiscriminate relief either in or out of the workhouse, and in the main have usefully tried to do our duty both to the poor, who have our first claim, and to the ratepayers.
We have never ceased to urge for the past ten years that the poor are a metropolitan charge, that unemployment is a national question, that the Poor Law should be reformed. We are glad to know that our work, despite this present attack, has been successful, and that the poor of Poplar are better cared for, and not only the poor of Poplar, but the poor of the United Kingdom generally, as a result of our effort.