For two years the Labour Representation Committee, in spite of diligent propaganda among Trade Union Executives, seemed to hang fire. The General Election of 1900 found it unprepared; and, though it put fifteen candidates in the field, only two of them were successful. No Co-operative Society joined; the Social Democratic Federation withdrew; scarcely a score of Trades Councils were enrolled; and though sixty-five separate Trade Unions gradually adhered—being only about five or six per cent of the total number—the aggregate affiliated membership of the Party did not reach half a million. Then the tide turned, mainly through the rally of Trade Unionism as it became aware of the full implications of the assault upon it made by the decision in the Taff Vale case, which we have already described. The miners stood aloof only because they preferred to use their own organisation. In 1901 the Miners’ Federation voted a levy of a penny per month on all its membership in order to create a Parliamentary Fund; and the running of as many as seventy candidates was then talked about. During the year 1902 the number of adhering Trade Unions and Trades Councils, and the total affiliated membership, were alike practically doubled. In the next two years the Committee contested no fewer than six Parliamentary by-elections, returning its members in half of them.[719] Meanwhile the Conservative Government obstinately refused to allow legislation restoring to Trade Unions the statutory status of 1871-76, of which the judges’ decision in the Taff Vale case had deprived them. Careful preparation was accordingly made for a successful appeal to Trade Unionists at the General Election which was approaching; and when it came, in January 1906, no fewer than fifty independent Labour candidates were put in the field against Liberals and Conservatives alike. To the general surprise of the political world, as many as twenty-nine of these were successful; besides a dozen other workmen, mostly miners, who again stood with Liberal Party support and were still regarded as belonging to that Party. The twenty-nine at once formed themselves into, and were recognised as, a separate independent party in the House of Commons, with its own officers and whips, concerned to push its own programme irrespective of the desires and convenience of the other political parties. At the same time the Labour Representation Committee changed its name to the Labour Party.
We need not concern ourselves with the Parliamentary struggles of the next three years, during which the Parliamentary Labour Party may claim to have indirectly secured the passage, as Government measures, of the Trade Disputes Act, the Miners’ Eight Hours Act, and the Trade Boards Act, and to have developed something like a Parliamentary programme. It suffered, however, in the Trade Union world, from its inevitable failure to impress its will on the triumphant Liberal majority of these years. What saved the Labour Party from decline, and gave it indeed fresh impetus in the Trade Union movement, was the renewed legal assault on Trade Unionism itself, which in 1909, as we have described, culminated in the Osborne Judgement of the highest Appeal Court, by which the Trade Unions were prohibited from applying any of their funds to political activities and to the support of the Labour Party in particular. The refusal of the Liberal Government for four whole years to remedy this gross miscarriage of justice though conscious that it was not permanently defensible; and the unconcealed desire of the Liberal Party politicians to put the Labour Party out of action as an independent political force, swung over to its side the great bulk of active Trade Unionists, including many, especially in Lancashire, who had hitherto counted to the Conservative Party. By 1913, in spite of a large number of injunctions restraining Trade Unions from affiliating, the Labour Party could count on a membership of nearly two millions, and this number has since steadily grown. The two General Elections of 1910, though dominated by other issues, left the Parliamentary Labour Party unshaken; whilst the accession to the Party of the Miners’ members raised its Parliamentary strength to forty-two. Payment of members was secured in 1911, and the Mines (Minimum Wage) Act in 1912, but not until 1913 could the Government be induced to pass into law the Trade Union Act, which once more permitted Trade Unions to engage in any lawful purposes that their members desired. This concession was, even then, made subject to any objecting member being enabled to withhold that part of his contribution applicable to political purposes—an illogical restriction, because it applied only to the dissentient’s tiny fraction of money, and he was not empowered to prevent the majority of members from using the indivisible corporate power of the Union itself. This restriction, not put upon any other corporate body, was universally believed to have been imposed, in the assumed interest of the Liberal Party, with the object of crippling the political influence of Trade Unionism; and is still bitterly resented. [720]
Whilst it was very largely the successive assaults on Trade Unionism itself that built up the Labour Party, the ultimate defeat of these assaults, the concession of Payment of Members, and the attainment of legal security by the Trade Union Act of 1913, did nothing to stay its progress. At the same time, the injunctions of the years 1909-12, and the fear of litigation, together with a certain disillusionment with Parliamentary action among the rank and file, led to the gradual falling away of some Trade Unions, mostly of comparatively small membership. The very basis of the Labour Party, upon which alone it has proved possible to build up a successful political force—the combination, within a political federation, of Trade Unions having extensive membership and not very intense political energy, and Socialist societies of relatively scanty membership but overflowing with political talent and zeal—necessarily led to complications. It needed all the tact and patient persuasion of the leaders of both sections to convince the Socialists that their ideals and projects were not being sacrificed to the stolidity and the prejudices of the mass of Trade Unionists; and at the same time to explain to the Trade Unionists how valuable was the aid of the knowledge, eloquence, and Parliamentary ability contributed by such Socialist representatives as Keir Hardie, Philip Snowden, J. Ramsay MacDonald, and W. C. Anderson. Moreover, the complications and difficulties of Parliamentary action in a House of Commons where the Government continuously possessed a solid majority; the political necessity of supporting the Liberal Party Bills relating to the Budget and the House of Lords, and of not playing into the hands of a still more reactionary Front Opposition Bench, were not readily comprehended by the average workman. What the militants in the country failed to allow for was the impotence of a small Parliamentary section to secure the adoption of its own policy by a Parliamentary majority. But it is, we think, now admitted that it was a misfortune that the Parliamentary Labour Party of these years never managed to put before the country the large outlines of an alternative programme based on the Party’s conception of a new social order, eliminating the capitalist profit-maker wherever possible, and giving free scope to communal and industrial Democracy—notably with regard to the administration of the railways and the mines, the prevention of Unemployment, and also the provision for the nation’s non-effectives, which the Government dealt with so unsatisfactorily in the National Insurance Act of 1911. The failure of the Parliamentary Labour Party between 1910 and 1914 to strike the imagination of the Trade Union world led to a certain reaction against political action as such, and to a growing doubt among the active spirits as to the value of a Labour Party which did not succeed in taking vigorous independent action, either in Parliament or on the platform and in the press, along the lines of changing the existing order of society. A like failure to strike the imagination characterised The Daily Citizen—the organ which the Labour Party and the Trade Union Movement had established with such high hopes—and its inability to gain either intellectual influence or adequate circulation did not lighten the somewhat gloomy atmosphere of the Labour Party councils of 1913-14.[721] This reaction did not appreciably affect the numerical and financial strength of the Labour Party itself, as the relatively few withdrawals of Unions were outweighed by the steady increase in membership of the hundred principal Unions which remained faithful, by the accession of other Unions, and by the continual increase in the number and strength of the affiliated Trades Councils and Local Labour Parties. But the reaction in Trade Union opinion weakened the influence of the members of the Parliamentary Party, alike in the House of Commons and in their own societies. A wave of “Labour Unrest,” of “Syndicalism,” of “rank and file movements” for a more aggressive Trade Unionism, of organisation by “shop stewards” in opposition to national executives, and of preference for “Direct Action” over Parliamentary procedure swept over British Trade Unionism, affecting especially the London building trades, the South Wales Miners, and the engineering and shipbuilding industry on the Clyde. The impetuous strikes in 1911-13 of the Railwaymen, the Coal-miners, the Transport Workers, and the London Building Trades, which we have already described, were influenced, partly, by this new spirit. The number of disputes reported to the Labour Department, which had sunk in 1908 to only 399, rose in 1911 to 903, and culminated in the latter half of 1913 and the first half of 1914 in the outbreak of something like a hundred and fifty strikes per month. British Trade Unionism was, in fact, in the summer of 1914, working up for an almost revolutionary outburst of gigantic industrial disputes, which could not have failed to be seriously embarrassing for the political organisation to which the movement had committed itself, when, in August 1914, war was declared, and all internal conflict had perforce to be suspended.
During the war (1914-18) the task of the Labour Party was one of exceptional difficulty. It had necessarily to support the Government in a struggle of which five-sixths of its Parliamentary representatives and probably nine-tenths of its aggregate membership approved. The very gravity of the national crisis compelled the Party to abstain from any action that would have weakened the country’s defence. On the other hand, the three successive Administrations that held office during the war were all driven by their needs, as we have already described, to impose upon the wage-earners cruel sacrifices, and to violate, not once but repeatedly, all that Organised Labour in Britain held dear. The Party could not refrain, at whatever cost of misconstruction, from withstanding unjustifiable demands by the Government;[722] protesting against its successive breaches of faith to the Trade Unions; demanding the conditions in the forthcoming Treaty of Peace that, as could be already foreseen, would be necessary to protect the wage-earning class; standing up for the scandalously ill-used “conscientious objectors,” and doing its best to secure, in the eventual demobilisation and social reconstruction, the utmost possible protection of the mass of the people against Unemployment and “Profiteering.” In all this the Labour Party earned the respect of the most thoughtful Trade Unionists, but necessarily exposed itself to a constant stream of newspaper misrepresentation and abuse. Any opposition or resistance to the official demands was inevitably misrepresented as, and mistaken for, an almost treasonable “Pacifism” or “Defeatism”—a misunderstanding of the attitude of the Party to which colour was lent by the persistence and eloquence with which the small Pacifist Minority within the Party—a minority which, it must be said, included some of the most talented and active of its leading members in the House of Commons—used every opportunity publicly to denounce the Government’s conduct in the war. But although the Pacifist Group in Parliament was strenuously supported in the country by the relatively small but extremely active constituent society of the Labour Party styled The Independent Labour Party—the very name helping the popular misunderstanding—the Trade Unionists, forming the vast majority of the Labour Party, remained, with extremely few exceptions, grimly determined at all costs to win the war.
If Organised Labour had been against the war, it is safe to say that the national effort could not have been maintained. The need for the formal association of the Labour Party with the Administration was recognised by Mr. Asquith in 1915, when he formed the first Coalition Cabinet, into which he invited the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Mr. Arthur Henderson (Friendly Society of Ironfounders), who became President of the Board of Education. Later on, in 1916, Mr. G. N. Barnes (Amalgamated Society of Engineers) was appointed to the new office of Minister of Pensions. When, in December 1916, Mr. Asquith resigned, and Mr. Lloyd George formed a new Coalition Government, Mr. Henderson entered the small War Cabinet that was then formed, with the nominal office of Paymaster-General; whilst Mr. Barnes continued Minister of Pensions, Mr. John Hodge (British Steel Smelters’ Society) was appointed to the new office of Minister of Labour, and three other members of the Party (Mr. W. Brace, South Wales Miners; Mr. G. H. Roberts, Typographical Society; and Mr. James Parker, National Union of General Workers) received minor ministerial posts. [723]
Throughout the whole period of the war all the several demands of the Government upon the organised workers, the abrogation of “Trade Union Conditions” in all industries working for war needs, the first and second Munitions of War Acts, the subversion of individual liberty by the successive orders under the Defence of the Realm Acts, the successive applications of the Military Service Acts, the imposition of what was practically Compulsory Arbitration to settle the rates of wages—were accepted, though only after serious protest, by large majorities at the various Conferences of the Labour Party, as well as by the various annual Trades Union Congresses,[724] in spite of the resistance of minorities, including more than “pacifists.” The entry of Mr. Henderson into Mr. Asquith’s first Coalition Government, and that of Mr. Barnes into Mr. Lloyd George’s War Cabinet, together with the acceptance of ministerial office by other leading members of the Labour Party—though any such ministerial coalition was in flagrant violation of the very principles of its existence, and was strenuously combated on grounds of expediency by many of its members who loyally supported the war—equally received the endorsement of large majorities at the Party Conferences. From the beginning of the war to the end, the Labour Party, alike in all its corporate acts and by the individual efforts of its leading members (other than the minority already mentioned), stuck at nothing in its determination to help the Government to win the war.
More controversial were the persistent efforts made by the Labour Party to maintain its international relations with the Labour and Socialist Movements of Continental Europe. From the first it was seen to be important to get the representatives of the Trade Unions and Socialist organisations of the Allied Nations, and not merely their Governments, united in a declaration of the aims and the justification of a war that was everywhere outraging working-class idealism. Such a unanimity was successfully achieved in February 1915 at a conference, held in London at the instance of the Labour Party, of delegates from the working-class organisations of France, Belgium, and Great Britain, with Russian representatives, then allied in arms against the Central Empires.[725] Later on, when a Minority Party had been formed among the German Socialists, and when the Austrian and Hungarian working-class Movements were also in revolt against the militarism of their Government, repeated efforts were made by the Labour Party to encourage this revolt, and for this purpose to obtain the necessary Government facilities for a meeting, in some neutral city, of the working-class “International,” at which the Allied Case could be laid before the neutrals, and a basis found for united action with all the working-class elements in opposition to the dominant military Imperialism. After the Russian revolution of March 1917, the Petrograd Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Council actually issued an invitation for a working-class “International” at Stockholm; and the participation of the British Labour Party in this International Congress, which was not then favoured by Mr. Henderson, received at one time no small support from the Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George. In the end the Government despatched Mr. Henderson on an official mission to Petrograd (incidentally empowering him, if he thought fit, to remain there as Ambassador at £8000 a year). Meanwhile the proposal for an International Congress had been modified, first into one for a purely consultative gathering, and then into one for a series of separate interviews between a committee of neutrals and the representatives of each of the belligerents in turn, with a view to discovering a possible basis for peace—a project to which Mr. Henderson, from what he learnt at Petrograd, was converted. A National Conference of the Labour Party in August 1917 approved of participation in such a Congress at Stockholm; but the French and Italian Governments would not hear of it, and Mr. Lloyd George went back on his prior approval, absolutely declining to allow passports to be issued. Amid great excitement, and under circumstances of insult and indignity which created resentment among the British working class, Mr. Henderson felt obliged to tender his resignation of his place in the War Cabinet, in which he was succeeded by Mr. Barnes, who was getting more and more out of sympathy with the majority of the Party.[726] The Labour Party Executive, in alliance with the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, then applied itself to getting agreement among the Labour and Socialist Movements of the Allied Nations as to the lines on which—assuming an Allied victory—the terms of peace should be drawn, in order to avert as much as possible of the widespread misery which, it could be foreseen, must necessarily fall upon the wage-earning class. In this effort, in which Mr. Henderson displayed great tact and patience, he had the implicit sanction of the British Government, and, with some reluctance, also of the Governments of the other Allied Nations by whom the necessary passports were issued for an Inter-Allied Conference in London in August 1917, which was abortive; for provisional discussions at Paris in February 1918; and for a second Inter-Allied Conference at the end of the same month in London, which resulted in a virtually unanimous agreement upon what should be the terms of peace,[727] on a basis already approved on December 28, 1917, by a Joint Conference of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, and widely published all over the world. The terms thus agreed were, in fact, immediately adopted in outline in a public deliverance by Mr. Lloyd George as those on which Germany could have peace at any time; and the same proposals were promptly made the basis of President Wilson’s celebrated “Fourteen Points” on which eventually (but only after another ten months’ costly war) the Armistice of November 11, 1918, was concluded. Profound was the disappointment, and bitter the resentment, of the greater part of the organised Labour Movement of Great Britain when it was revealed how seriously the diplomatists at the Paris Conference had departed from these terms in the Treaty of Peace which was imposed on the Central Empires. [728]
We have already attempted to sum up the effect of the Great War on the industrial status of Trade Unionism. It is more difficult to estimate its effect on the political organisation of the movement. The outbreak of the war had found the Labour Party, in the see-saw of Trade Union opinion to which we have elsewhere referred, suffering from an inevitable disillusionment among Trade Unionists as to the immediate potency of Parliamentary representation—a disillusionment manifested in the outbreak of rebellious strikes that characterised the years 1911-14. The achievements of the Labour Party in the House of Commons had fallen short of the eager hopes with which the new party had raised its standard on its triumphant entry in 1906. In 1914, it may be said, the Labour Party was at a dead point. The effect upon it of the Great War was to raise it in proportion to the height of the vastly greater issues with which it was compelled to deal. Amid the stress of war, and of the intensely controversial decisions which it had necessarily to take, the Labour Party revised its constitution, widened its aims, opened its ranks to the “workers by brain” as well as the workers by hand, and received the accession of many thousands of converts from the Liberal and Conservative Parties. It made great progress in its difficult task of superimposing, on an organisation based on national societies, the necessary complementary organisation of its affiliated membership by geographical constituencies. It equipped itself during the war, for the first time, with a far-reaching and well-considered programme not confined to distinctively “Labour” issues, but covering the whole field of home politics, and even extending to foreign relations.[729] The formulation of such a programme, from beginning to end essentially Socialist in character, and including alike ideals of social reconstruction and detailed reforms of immediate practicability, together with the wholehearted adoption of this programme, after six months’ consideration by the constituent societies and branches, was a notable achievement, which placed the British Labour Party ahead of those of other countries. Moreover, the formulation of a comprehensive social programme and of “terms of Peace,” based on the principles for which the war had ostensibly been fought—principles which were certainly not carried in the Treaty of Peace—transformed the Labour Party from a group representing merely the class interests of the manual workers into a fully constituted political Party of national scope, ready to take over the government of the country and to conduct both home and foreign affairs on definite principles. Taken together with the intellectual bankruptcy of the Liberal Party and its apparent incapacity to formulate any positive policy, whether with regard to the redistribution of wealth within our own community or with regard to our attitude towards other races within or without the British Empire, the emergence of the Labour Party programme meant that the Party stood forth, in public opinion, as the inevitable alternative to the present Coalition Government when the time came for this to fall. The result was that, aided by the steady growth of Trade Unionism, the Party came near, between 1914 and 1919, to doubling its aggregate membership. When hostilities ceased, it insisted on resuming the complete independence of the other political parties, which it had, by joining the successive Coalition Governments, consented temporarily to forgo; and such of its leaders as refused to withdraw from ministerial office[730] were unhesitatingly shed from the Party. Meanwhile, the extension of the franchise and redistribution of seats, which had been carried by general consent in the spring of 1918, turned out to raise the electorate to nearly treble that of 1910, whilst the new constituencies proved to have been so adjusted as greatly to facilitate an increase in the number of miners’ representatives. When the General Election came, in December 1918, though the Labour Party fought under great disadvantages and it was seen that most of the soldier electors would be unable to record their votes, it put no fewer than 361 Labour candidates in the field against Liberal and Conservative alike, contesting two-thirds of all the constituencies in Great Britain. In face of a “Lloyd George tide” of unprecedented strength these Labour candidates received nearly one-fourth of all the votes polled in the United Kingdom; and though five-sixths of these numerous Labour candidatures were unsuccessful (including, unfortunately, most of its ablest Parliamentarians such as Messrs. Henderson,[731] MacDonald, Anderson, and Snowden), the Party increased its numerical strength in the House of Commons by 50 per cent, and, to the universal surprise, returned more than twice as many members as did the remnant of the Liberal Party adhering to Mr. Asquith—becoming, in fact, entitled to the position of “His Majesty’s Opposition.” It can hardly be said that during the session of 1919 the Parliamentary Labour Party, considerably strengthened in numbers but weakened by the defeat of its ablest Parliamentarians, has, under the leadership of the Right Honourable W. Adamson (Scottish Miners), made as much of its opportunities as the Labour Party in the country expected and desired. The political organisation of the Trade Union world remains, indeed, very far from adequate to the achievement of its far-reaching aims. It is not merely that the average British Trade Unionist, unlike the German, the Danish, Swedish, or the Belgian, has learnt so little the duty of subordinating minor personal or local issues, and of voting with his Party with as much loyalty as he shows in striking with his fellow-unionists, that by no means all the aggregate British Trade Union membership can steadfastly be relied on to vote for the Labour candidates. Nor is it only that the British Labour Party still fails to command the affiliation of as many Trade Unions as the Trades Union Congress, and that the great majority of the smaller and the local societies—less from dissent than out of apathy—remain aloof from both sides of the national organisation. The Trades Union Congress itself, after engendering, as independent organisations, first the General Federation of Trade Unions, and then the Labour Party, has not yet resigned itself to limiting its activities. The General Federation of Trade Unions may be said, indeed, to have now disappeared from the Trade Union world as an effective force in the determination of industrial or political policy. There remain three separate organisations of national scope; the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress which it is now proposed to transform into a General Council, the Executive Committee of the Labour Party, and the members of the House of Commons who form the Parliamentary Labour Party. Unfortunately, between these three groups there has been some lack of mutual consultation, and an indefiniteness if not a confusion of policy which stands in the way of effective leadership.[732] This has prevented the bringing to bear upon the political field of the full force, now almost a moiety of the whole registered electorate of Great Britain, that the Trade Union world may (including the wives of Trade Unionist electors) fairly claim to include. Fundamentally, however, the shortcomings of the political organisation of the Trade Union world are to be ascribed to its failure, down to the present, to develop a staff of trained political officers at all equal to those of the Trade Union organisers and Trade Union negotiators in the industrial field. The Labour Party, which can as yet rely only on the quite inadequate contribution from its affiliated societies of no more than twopence per member annually, has, so far, not succeeded in obtaining and keeping the services, as Registration Officers and Election Agents, of anything like so extensive and so competent a staff as either of the other political parties; and Labour Party candidatures are still run, occasionally with astonishing success, very largely upon that transient enthusiasm of the crowd upon which experienced electioneers wisely decline to rely for victory. What is, however, much more crippling to the Labour Party than the scanty funds with which its constituent societies supply it, and this insufficiency in the staff of trained election organisers, is the scarcity of trained Parliamentary representatives. Down to to-day the great bulk of Labour Members of Parliament have been drawn from the ranks of the salaried secretaries and other industrial officers of Trade Unions, who are nearly always not only men of competence in their own spheres, but also exceptionally good speakers for popular audiences, and, generally, in many respects above the average of middle-class candidates. But as Members of Parliament they have serious shortcomings. They can, to begin with, seldom devote the necessary time to their new duties. They usually find themselves compelled to strive to combine attendance at the House of Commons with the onerous industrial service of their societies. The Trade Unions have, as yet, only in a few cases realised the necessity of setting free from the constant burden of Trade Union work—as they might by promotion to some such consultative office as that of a salaried President—such of their officials as secure election to Parliament; whilst these officers, unable to maintain themselves and their families in London on their Parliamentary allowance for expenses of £400 a year, and afraid lest the loss of their seats may presently leave them without incomes, dare not resign their Trade Union posts. The result is an imperfect and always uncertain attendance of the Labour Members at the House of Commons; a fatal division and diversion of their attention; and an inevitable failure on their part to discharge with the fullest efficiency the duties of their two offices. Equally destructive of Parliamentary efficiency is the omission of the Trade Union world to provide or secure any training in the duties of a Member of Parliament for those whom they select as candidates and whose election expenses they defray with unstinted liberality. The lifelong training which these candidates have enjoyed as Branch and District Secretaries, as industrial organisers and negotiators, and as administrators of great Trade Unions, valuable as it is for Trade Union purposes, does not include, and indeed tends rather to exclude, the practical training in general politics, the working acquaintance with the British Constitution, the knowledge of how to use and how to control the adroit and well-equipped Civil Service, and the ability to translate both the half-articulate desires of the electorate to the House of Commons, and the advice of the political expert to the electorate, which, coupled with the general art of “Parliamentarianism,” constitutes the equipment of the really efficient Member of the House of Commons. Add to this that the very training which the life of the successful Trade Union official has given him, his perpetual struggle to rise in his vocation in competitive rivalry, not with persons of opposite views but actually with personal acquaintances of the same craft and the same political opinions as himself, is, in itself, not a good preparation for the incessant mutual consultation and carefully planned “team-work” which contributes so much to the effectiveness of a minority party in the House of Commons. Add to this again the personal rivalries among members of the Party, the jealousies from which no party is free, and the almost complete lack of opportunity for the constant social intercourse with each other away from the House of Commons that the members of the other parties enjoy—and it will be realised how seriously the Parliamentary Labour Party is handicapped by being made up, as it is at present, almost entirely of men who are compelled also to serve as Trade Union officials. Already, however, there are signs of improvement. Some Trade Unions, whilst willing to spend large sums on Parliamentary candidatures, are demurring to their salaried officials going to Westminster. The Workers’ Educational Association, Ruskin College, and other educational agencies are doing much to provide a wider political training than Trade Unionists have heretofore enjoyed. And as the Parliamentary Labour Party, claiming to-day to represent, not the Trade Unionists only, but the whole community of “workers by hand or by brain,” expands from sixty to four or six times that number—as it must before it can be confronted with the task of forming a Government—it will necessarily come to include an ever-increasing proportion of members drawn from other than Trade Union ranks; whilst even its Trade Union members cannot fail to acquire more of that habit of mutual intercourse and that art of combined action which, coupled with the Parliamentary skill and capacity for public administration of those who rise to leadership, is the necessary basis of successful party achievement.
Meanwhile, the political organisation of the Trade Union Movement, and the enlargement of its ideas on Communal and Industrial Democracy, have been manifesting themselves also in the important sphere of Local Government. After the “Labour” successes at the elections of Local Authorities, which continued for a whole decade from 1892, and placed over a thousand Trade Unionists and Socialists on Parish, District, Borough and County Councils, there ensued another decade in which, in the majority of districts, this active participation in local elections was impaired by the diversion of interest, both to Parliament and to industrial organisation. From 1914 to 1919 local elections were suspended. On their resumption in the latter year, they were energetically contested by the Labour Party, all over Great Britain, on its new and definitely Socialist programme, with the unexpected result that, up and down the country, the Labour candidates frequently swept the board, polling in the aggregate a very substantial proportion of the votes, electing altogether several thousand Councillors (five or six hundred in Scotland alone), and being returned in actual majorities in nearly half the Metropolitan Boroughs, several important Counties and Municipalities, and many Urban Districts and Parishes.