Mr. B. Shaw (Fabian Society) said he had no desire to give pain to the burglar—if any of that trade were in the room—or to the landlord or the capitalist, pure and simple; all he could say was that all three belonged to the same class, and that the injury each inflicted on the community was precisely of the same nature.
[Note.—The Social Democratic Federation had been founded in 1881; the Fabian Society, a few weeks before this conference met.]
[THE UNEMPLOYED (1885).]
Source.—The Times, February 17.
Yesterday afternoon three or four thousand of the unemployed of London held a demonstration on the Embankment near Cleopatra's Needle, and afterwards marched to Westminster, carrying banners. From Whitehall a large number of the crowd passed into Downing Street near the Premier's residence, where a Cabinet meeting was being held at the time, but at the request of the police, of whom an extra force were in attendance, the crowd moved round to King Street, where they were addressed in somewhat inflammatory terms by some of their speakers, who wore red badges. One speaker clung to the top of a lamp-post, and thence harangued the crowd; another spoke from a window-sill. Meantime, in the absence of Sir Charles Dilke, who was at the Cabinet Meeting, Mr. G. W. E. Russell, Parliamentary Secretary of the Local Government Board, received a small deputation of the leaders.... At the close of the interview the crowd marched back to the Embankment, where the following resolution was passed unanimously: "That this meeting of the Unemployed, having heard the answer given by the Local Government Board to their deputation, considers the refusal to start public works to be a sentence of death on thousands of those out of work, and the recommendation to bring pressure to bear on the local bodies to be a direct incitement to violence; further, it will hold Mr. G. W. E. Russell and the members of the Government, individually and collectively, guilty of the murder of those who may die in the next few weeks, and whose lives would have been saved had the suggestions of the deputation been acted on."
(Signed) John Burns, Engineer.
John E. Williams, Labourer.
William Henry, Foreman.
James Macdonald, Tailor.
[WORKING MEN MAGISTRATES (1885).]
Source.—The Manchester Guardian, May 14.