[41] J.A. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism, p. 93.
[42] L.T. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, p. 230.
[43] See "Report Eighteenth Annual Conference, I.L.P.," 1910, p. 59.
[44] Supra cit., p. 71.
Some of the I.L.P. members are Continental in their views. The president of the party used these words in his address, 1910: "All this jiggery-pokery of party government played like a game for ascendency and power is no use to us" (supra cit., p. 35). The discipline of the Labor Party was unable to keep half a dozen of its ablest debaters from fighting the Insurance Bill. The reversion of the radical Socialist element to the I.L.P. is by some observers considered not unlikely. Then the liberal or réformiste element will become either a faction of the Liberal-Radical party or melt entirely away as the Chartists did in 1844.
[45] This was the language used in the amendment moved in January, 1911.
[46] See Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 21, February 10, 1911.
[47] The Socialist workmen always resent the activity of the police and soldiers during strikes. In 1888 F. Engels wrote to an American friend: "The police brutalities in Trafalgar Square have done wonders in helping to widen the gap between the workingmen Radicals and the middle-class Liberals and Radicals." (See Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Fr. Engels u. A., Stuttgart, 1906.)
One of the incidents of the debate over the railway strike in the House of Commons was a clash between Lloyd George, the Liberal leader, and Keir Hardie, the Socialist. Keir Hardie had made inflammatory speeches to striking workmen, and for this the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave him a terrific and unmerciful flaying. (See Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, vol. 29, Aug. 22, 1911.)
[48] J. Ramsay MacDonald: speech delivered at Edinburgh, 1909.