THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.
As far as rural England is concerned, county councils, district councils, and parish councils are, generally speaking, very reluctant to put into operation the wide powers they possess. The average county council, though popularly elected, is composed in agricultural England of landowners and the bigger farmers, who, as a common rule, do not favour a land programme for labourers, and are anxious to keep down the rates. The rural district council and board of guardians are equally averse from any display of public enterprise, and the parish council, which often consists mainly of labourers, rarely accomplishes anything except at the prompting, or with the sanction, of the parochial landowner. The result is that allotments, rural housing, village baths and washhouses, an adequate water supply, public halls and libraries, are not regarded as the concern of rural elected authorities, but are left to the private enterprise of landowners. Civic pride, which glories in the public proprietorship of lands and libraries, tramways and lodging-houses, waterworks and workmen's dwellings, art galleries and swimming baths, and is a living influence in the municipalities of, let us say, London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham, West Ham, and many a smaller borough, does not exist in rural councils. To the farmer and the peasant public ownership is a new and alien thing. The common lands and all the old village communal life have gone out of the memory of rural England; but the feudal tradition that the landowner is the real centre of authority has survived, and it is the benevolent landowner who is expected to build cottages, grant allotments, and see to the water supply, as fifty years ago he built and managed the village school. Political organisation could break through this tradition, but farmers and agricultural labourers are without this organisation; and so the authority of the landowner remains, in spite of the democratic constitution of local government. The people can allow their power to remain in the hands of others, just as a king can be content to reign without ruling, and the local government of rural England is an oligarchy elected by a popular franchise.
In the factory towns and the mining districts it is a very different matter. Here the people are organised, and take their share in local government. In the county of Durham, for instance, the working class predominates on local councils, and the influence of trade unions prevails in these assemblies wherever a strong Labour party exists. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain began his public career on the Birmingham Town Council, and his municipal services earned for him the enthusiastic support of Birmingham for all his later political ventures. It would be difficult to mention the name of a great statesman who laid the foundations of his fame in rural local government.
As in local government, so in the Imperial Parliament. Rural England sends no Labour member to the House of Commons. Only in very exceptional cases has a tenant farmer been elected. It is the social labour of the mine and the mill that has produced the Labour member of Parliament.
Mr. Joseph Arch made a valiant attempt to organise the agricultural labourers of England, and from 1880 to 1890 a rural labourers' union, with some thousands of members, was in existence. For a time this secured a rise in wages, and when Mr. Arch was in Parliament, as a Liberal M.P. (1885-1895), the rural labourer hoped for lasting improvement in the conditions of life. But the Union fell to pieces, and Mr. Arch was not strong enough single-handed to force the claims of his constituents on the House of Commons.
The Workman in the House of Commons
To-day there are more than forty workmen in the House of Commons, and the great majority of these have served an apprenticeship in municipal and trade union offices. Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Stafford, South Wales, Glasgow, Dundee, Leicester, Norwich and London, all have their elected Labour members in Parliament, and a marked preference is shown for the man who has proved his honesty and capacity in the municipality, or as the leader of his trade union. All the miners' representatives are tried and experienced men. Mr. G.N. Barnes, M.P., was for ten years the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Mr. Clynes, M.P., was elected to the office of district secretary of the Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union twenty years ago; Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., has been general secretary of the same union since 1889, and has sat on the West Ham Corporation for more than sixteen years. Mr. George Lansbury, M.P., and Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., are well known for their work on the London County Council and on their local borough council and board of guardians. Similarly with other Labour members of Parliament. Their lives are marked by a sense of public responsibility, with the result that in the House of Commons they are grave, business-like, and undemonstrative. The Labour members do not make "scenes"; they respect the rules of the House and the dignity of the National Assembly, partly because they are all in sober middle age, but more because they have learnt that public business can only be carried on by due observance of order; and they are in Parliament to get business done for their constituents, to promote legislation that will make life easier for the working class. When Mr. Victor Grayson, in the exuberance of youth, and with a passion that blazed out against the misery of the poor, made a "scene" in the House of Commons, and was expelled, the Labour members were quite sincere in their disapproval. They understood, with a wider knowledge than Mr. Grayson possessed, that "scenes" alienated sympathy in the House, were not helpful in debate, and were not popular with the electors.
The member who would succeed in the House of Commons must respect the usages of the House, and show himself loyal to its laws of debate. As long as this respect and loyalty are shown the Labour member is accepted by his fellow-members as one who has been elected to the greatest club in the world, and is justly entitled to all the privileges of membership. For the British House of Commons is a democratic assembly, and in its collective pride it cares nothing for the opinions or social rank of its members. All it asks is that the newly-elected member should be alive to the honour of membership, should be modest in his bearing, and should as soon as possible "catch the tone of the House." He may be a labourer, or the son of a belted earl; the House is indifferent so long as his parliamentary manners are good.
The House of Commons is a far more orderly assembly than it was a hundred years ago; it is more sober and less noisy, and the arrival of Labour members has increased rather than diminished its good behaviour. It is also a far more industrious assembly, and the influence of the Labour party compels an amount of legislation that honourable members would have thought impossible fifty years ago.