[253] The New York Call, Nov. 13, 1911.
[254] Edmond Kelly, "Twentieth-Century Socialism," p. 152.
[255] The Socialist Review (London), September, 1910.
[256] Winston Churchill, op. cit., p. 73.
[257] The Socialist Review (London), October, 1911.
[258] The profound opposition between the "State Socialism" of the Labour Party and the revolutionary aims and methods of genuine Socialism and the new labor unionism appeared more clearly in the coal strike of 1912 than it had in the railway strike of the previous year. As Mr. Lloyd George very truthfully remarked in Parliament, no leaders of the Labour Party had committed themselves to syndicalism, while syndicalism and socialism [i.e. the socialism of the Labour Party] were mutually destructive. "We can console ourselves with the fact," said Mr. Lloyd George, "that the best policeman for the syndicalists is the socialist [i.e. the Labourite]."
The conduct of many of the Labour Party leaders during this strike, as during the railway strike, fully justified the confidence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. MacDonald, for example, spoke of syndicalism in much the same terms as those used by Mr. Lloyd George. He viewed it as evil, to be obviated by greater friendliness and consideration on the part of employers towards employees, a position fully endorsed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the other Radicals of the British Cabinet.
The coal strike throughout was, indeed, almost a repetition of the railway strike. What I have said of the one applies, with comparatively slight changes, to the other. Even the so-called Minimum Wage Law is essentially identical with the methods adopted to determine the wages of railway employees.
[259] The New York Call, April 17, 1910.
[260] The International Socialist Review, June, 1911.