The Rise of the Democracy

by Joseph Clayton

The third distinguished working-class leader in Parliament is Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, the elected leader of the Labour Party, and its secretary since its formation. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald is for the working class, but, though born of labouring people, and educated in a Scotch board school, has long ceased to be of them. Never a workman, and never associated with the workman's trade union, Mr. MacDonald went from school teaching to journalism and to a political private secretaryship, and so settled down quickly into the habits and customs of the ruling middle class. Marriage united him still more closely with the middle class, and strengthened his position by removing all fear of poverty, and providing opportunities for travel.

From the first Mr. MacDonald's political life has been directed clearly to one end—the assumption of power to be used for the social improvement of the people. And this ambition has carried him far, and may carry him farther. With the industry and persistence that are common to his race, Mr. MacDonald has taken every means available to educate himself on all political questions; with the result that he is accepted to-day as one of the best informed members of the House of Commons. He taught himself to speak, and his speeches are appreciated. He taught himself to write, and his articles on political questions have long been welcome in the monthly reviews, and his books on Socialism are widely read. Twenty years ago the Liberal Party promised no political career to earnest men like Mr. MacDonald, men anxious for social reform. The future seemed to be with the Socialists, and with the Independent Labour Party. When the Liberal downfall came in 1895, it was thought that the fortunes of Liberalism were ended. Native prudence has restrained Mr. Ramsay MacDonald from pioneering, but once the Independent Labour Party, of Mr. Keir Hardie's desire, was set going, and promised an effectual means for political work, Mr. MacDonald joined it, and did well to do so. As an ordinary Liberal or Radical Member of Parliament, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald would never have had the opportunities the Labour Party has given him. He only entered the House of Commons in 1906—at the age of forty—and already as leader of the Labour Party he is a distinguished Parliamentary figure, of whose future great things are foretold.

Mr. MacDonald has studied politics as other people study art or science. He has trained himself to become a statesman as men and women train themselves to become painters and musicians. He has learnt the rules of the game, marked the way of failure and the road to success, and his career may be pondered as an example to the young. No generous outburst of wrath disfigures Mr. MacDonald's speeches, no rash utterance is ever to be apologised for, no hasty impulse to be regretted. In the Labour movement Mr. MacDonald won success over older men by an indefatigable industry, a marked aptitude for politics, and by an obvious prosperity. Other things being equal, it is inevitable that in politics, as in commerce, the needy, impecunious man will be rejected in favour of the man with an assured balance at the bank, and the man of regular habits preferred before a gifted but uncertain genius. The Socialist and Labour movements of our time have claimed the services of many gifted men and women, and the annals of these movements are full of heroic self-sacrifice. But an aptitude for politics was not a distinguishing mark of Socialists, and therefore Mr. MacDonald's experience and abilities gave him at once a prominent place in the council of the Independent Labour Party, and soon made him the controlling power in that organisation. With the formation of the National Labour Party a very much wider realm was to be conquered, and Mr. MacDonald has been as successful here as in the earlier Independent Labour Party. But now the Labour Party having made Mr. MacDonald its chairman, it can do no more for him. He is but forty-five years old, his health is good, his talents are recognised; by his aversion from everything eccentric or explosive, the public have understood that he is trustworthy. We may expect to see Mr. Ramsay MacDonald a Cabinet Minister in a Liberal-Labour Government. It may even happen that he will become Prime Minister in such a Government. He is a "safe" man, without taint of fanaticism. His sincerity for the improvement of the lot of the poor does not compel him to extravagant speech on the subject, and his imagination is sufficient to exclude dullness of view. He has proved that the application of Socialist principles does not require any violent disturbance of the existing order, and is compatible with social respectability and political authority. A public opinion that would revolt against the notion of an ex-workman becoming Prime Minister would not be outraged in any way by Mr. MacDonald holding that office. Mr. Burns and Mr. Hardie have remained in their own and in the public eye representatives of the working class, all education notwithstanding. Mr. MacDonald has long cut himself off from the labouring class of his boyhood. He has adapted himself easily and naturally to the life and manners of the wealthier professional classes, and he moves without constraint in the social world of high politics, as one born to the business. No recognition of the workman is possible in Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's case, and this fact is greatly in his favour with the multitudes who still hold that England should be ruled by "gentlemen."

The Right Hon. D. Lloyd George is a striking figure in our new democracy, and his character and position are to be noted. It was not as a labour representative but as the chosen mouthpiece of the working middle class, enthusiastic for Welsh nationalism, that Mr. Lloyd George entered Parliament in 1890, at the age of twenty-seven. With his entry into the Cabinet, in company with Mr. John Burns, at the Liberal revival in 1905, government by aristocracy was ended; and when Mr. Lloyd George went from the Board of Trade to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, startling changes were predicted in national finance. These predictions were held to have been fulfilled in the Budget of 1909. The House of Lords considered the financial proposals of the Budget so revolutionary that it took the unprecedented course of rejecting the Bill, and thus precipitated the dispute between the two Houses of Parliament, which was brought to a satisfactory end by the Parliament Act of 1911. Romantic and idealist from the first, and with unconcealed ambition and considerable courage, Mr. Lloyd George, with the strong backing of his Welsh compatriots, fought his way into the front rank of the Liberal Party during the ten years (1895-1905) of opposition. More than once Mr. George pitted himself against Mr. Joseph Chamberlain in the days of the Conservative ascendancy and the South African War, and his powers as a Parliamentary debater won general acknowledgment. In youth Mr. Lloyd George, full of the fervour of Mazzini's democratic teaching, dreamed of Wales as a nation, a republic, with himself, perhaps, as its first president. Welsh nationalism could not breed a Home Rule Party as Irish nationalism has done, and Mr. Lloyd George has found greater scope for his talents in the Liberal Party. The Welsh "question" has dwindled into a campaign for the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales, a warfare of Dissenters and Churchmen, and to Mr. Lloyd George there were bigger issues at stake than the position of the Welsh Church.

THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P.

Already Mr. Lloyd George's Budget and his speeches in support of the Budget have made the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer familiar to the people of Great Britain; and now, in the eager discussion on his Bill for National Insurance, that name is still more loudly spoken. Hated by opponents and praised by admirers, denounced and extolled, Mr. Lloyd George enjoys the tumult he arouses. His passionate speeches for the poor provoke the sympathy of the working class; his denunciations of the rich stir the anger of all who fear social revolution. Hostile critics deny any constructive statesmanship in Mr. Lloyd George's plans and orations, and prophesy a short-lived tenure of office. Radical supporters hail him as a saviour of society, and are confident that under his leadership democracy will enter the promised land of peace and prosperity for all. Neutral minds doubt whether Mr. Lloyd George is sufficiently well-balanced for the responsibilities of high office, and express misgivings lest the era of social reform be inaugurated too rapidly. The obvious danger of a fall always confronts ambition in politics, but the danger is only obvious to the onlooker. Pressing forward the legislative measures he has set his heart upon, and impatient to carry out the policy that seems to him of first importance to the State, Mr. Lloyd George pays little heed to the criticism of friends or foes. A supreme self-confidence carries him along, and the spur of ambition is constantly pricking. Political co-operation is difficult for such a man, and an indifference to reforms that are not of his initiation, and a willingness to wreck legislation that cannot bear his name, are a weakness in Mr. Lloyd George that may easily produce a fall. Only a very strong man can afford to say that a reform shall be carried in his way, or not at all, in cheerful disregard of the wishes of colleagues and followers. Mr. Lloyd George's attitude on the question of Women's Suffrage is characteristic. Professing a strong belief in the justice of women's enfranchisement, he assumes that he can safely oppose all Women's Suffrage Bills that are not of his framing, even when these Bills are the work of ardent Liberals. He would have the measure postponed until he himself can bring in a Reform Bill, to the end that the enfranchisement of women may be associated with his name for all time.

It is dangerous to the statesman, the ambition that finds satisfaction less in the success of a party or the triumph of a cause, than in the personal victory. Dangerous, because it brings with it an isolation from friends and colleagues. These come to stand coldly aloof, and then, if a slip occurs or a mistake is made, and there comes a fall, no hands are stretched out to repair the damage or restore the fallen. The statesman who is suspected of "playing for his own hand" may laugh at the murmurs of discontent amongst his followers while all goes well for him, but when he falls he falls beyond recovery. No one can foretell the end of Mr. Lloyd George's career, but his popularity with the multitude will not make up to him for the want of support in Parliament should an error of judgment undo him. The pages of political history are strewn with the stories of high careers wrecked in a feverish haste for fame, that overlooked dangers close at hand; of eminent politicians broken in the full course of active life by the mere forgetfulness of the existence of other persons. A simple miscalculation of forces, and from lofty station a minister tumbles into the void.

The stability of the working-class leaders makes their future a matter of fairly safe conjecture. Mr. Lloyd George, romantic in temperament, covetous of honour, confident of popularity, but heedless of good-will alienated and of positive ill-will created, has reached the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Will he climb still higher in office, or will he pass to the limbo peopled by those who were and are not? Time alone can tell. But in this year of grace 1911 Mr. Lloyd George, incarnation of the hard-working middle class, is a very distinct personality in the government of the country, and his presence in the Cabinet a fact in the history of democracy.