Chapter X - Between 1925 and 1928

CHAPTER X BETWEEN 1925 AND 1928 A. FABIANS AND THE STRIKE Fabians took varying positions but all on the left, in regard to the Strike of 1926. In regard to its countermove, the Trades Union Act of 1927, Fabianism was more of one attitude which nevertheless differed son1ewhat from that of the unions. To abbreviate a story which all Labourite \vriters tell in ex quisite detail: The miners were warned, upon the subsidy's expiring, that v{ages \vould drop and hours be lengthened. Every student of the economics of the situation agrees that the wage scale in 'general was too rigid. The miners, however, were the victims of being the" marginal" value makers, like the" worst land" in the land-based theory of value. They responded with the slogan, " Not a penny off the pay; not a minute on the day." There ensued a general lockout. Meanwhile, the TUC had signi fied it would under such circumstances, anticipated since 1925 when the Government started the subsidy, support the miners by pressuring Parliament to coerce the owners-to do what, is a little unclear in their statements. They did not sIoganize " ration alisation" or "nationalisation" nor even "unification." Not to lower wages, and to shorten the day to seven hours, were aims vaguely hoped for. To stop the fall of wages was the real prob leln. Ostensibly the TUC intended to stand by the miners in their struggle \vith the O'wners; but their attack was made upon Parliatnent to force it to deal with owners by laws.

Lord Birkenhead had produced a forn1ula involving wage readjustments, which the TUC representative had accepted, when at tnidnight of the deadline date the machine men of the Daily 1\1ail struck because of an editorial they were to set up \vhich, they asserted, impugned the patriotism· of the working class. Hearing of this, the Bald\vin Cabinet served a twofold ultimatum: The TUe was to repudiate the machine men and withdraw strike 436 Between 1925 and 1928 437 notices. Promptly, TUC repudiated the Daily Mail strikers. 1 Nothing was said of the notices by TUGC. These notices were out and the date to begin the Strike set.2 This fact and the fact that it was distinctly stated that the strikers' aim was to coerce the Government, renders doubtful the TUC position and the legality of the Strike under the Trade Union Act of 1906. This Act upheld the right to strike and had been interpreted to exempt from trial for breach of contract individuals acting upon strike orders, or unions on strike; but it did not legalize a General Strike, or one against the Government, nor a " sympathy" strike. When the Cabinet broke off negotiations (union negotiators reporting back on the repudiation found the rooms darkened and deserted), the strike notices, as they knew, would automatically go into effect.

Forthwith Sir John Simon and Astbury J. in an obiter dicta called the General Strike illegal while Sir Harry Slesser upheld the legality of it. Some publicists like Fabian Kingsley Martin 3 said it was not a General Strike; others like Churchill said it was, and as such, Revolutionary. Fabian Burns said it was against the Government and not against the owners and that it was Revo lutionary, although the leaders were not revolutionaries. It was broken when Sir Herbert Samuel's proposal took shape in Lord Birkenhead's formula and was adopted by TUC, without the miners. The Government had finally (four days late) published the Archbishop-of Canterbury's appeal against a "finish fight." It was deplored that Cardinal Bourne arraigned himself on the side against the constitutionality of the ~trike. His Eminence was publicly upbraided by Catholic M.P.'s,· led by Fabian John Scurr. 1 Recall this was George Isaacs' organization .. He was in 1924 Parlia mentary Private Secretary to J. H. Thomas.

2 The unions prepared to see to continuous service for hospitals and the like and for food distribution. The Government had prepared well in advance an emergency system which worked with fanfare and military show a little on the ridiculous side. 3 We studied Martin's British Public and the General Strike in connection with the Fraser Group. Its best use was to inform the young Socialists with a ready made "public opinion." As' such, it contributed to young voters' support of the Party in 1929. • Cf. Roger H.· Saltau (of the London School of Economicsand Political Science), "The British Political Scene Since the General Election," The American Political Science Review, XXIII (November, 1929), 892--907.

438 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 The Cardinal's position would not have been so difficult to com prehend if at any time the undermining Statism then endemic in British Socialism had ever been subjected to' ecclesiastical criti cism, officially. On the other hand, alsof distinctions had not been made in the public mind and Socialism had been lumped with Communism, so that those who advocated Statism and what is now called "destructionism" of the permeating type escaped the correction meted out to catastrophic Socialism. This resulted in a general acceptance of penetrating gradualist Socialism. as mere reformism. 5 In its polite, welfare-bent, tolerant and studious if thoroughly secular spirit, it had moved the parts of the Movement into position without Church help but with great assistance from Evangelical ministers like William Mellor, Ben Spoor, Canon Donaldson, and five others in Parliament. The quality of outright ILP Socialism was more easily reprehensible as being more patently comprehensible; ILP if it advocated slower political action asked for more "direct action" to. win the 1\1ovement for Socialism.6 Therefore, the political spearhead of the Labour Movement escaped close. scrutiny of its Socialistic tendencies or of its definition of Socialism.

Also "sentimental" 7 Socialists did not compass in their raSaltau, while showing how non-conformist chapels had contributed to form ing the Labour Party, remarks "the existence of the Socialist Roman Catholics-a combination which would be unthinkable on the Continent," p. 898. Cf. Oldmeadow, Cardinal Bourne, pp. 141 f, which counter~ this. 51bid. Saltau shows how the real meaning of the election of 1929 was a new Liberalism and not Socialism and that· this was understood by Labour and accounts for MqcDonald's . retaining the leadership-those outside the Socialists preferred him to Baldwin. He shows how the threat to his position came from his own Party (Maxtonites) and how the" alternative vote" would have articulated the real· strength of Liberalism. But Saltau, while accounting for the Right Liberals and the Left Socialists, omits the real Socialist center of the Labour Party, the intellectual leadership not too accurately marked down as " moderates."

6 After the Strike, MacDonald, and, a little later, Snowden left the ILP; both preferred political action to more thoroughgoing Socialism. 1 By" sentiment" is not meant the oratorical" pity and love" Socialism of MacDonald. His speeches and writings cited in Tittman, Ope cit., show his Socialism to be -a natural religion and respectful of the justice of private property. "Sentimental" Socialists make Socialism a religion and offend those who compromise it for political ends as they· are offended by Between 1925 and 1928 439 tionale any connivance with Capitalism. They were more loudly vocal than Fabianism and more devoted to direct action. Their manners and those of the colorful group once comprised in FRD put the General Strike idea beyond the sympathies of Cardinal Bourne, also, the fact that the terminology linked It General Strike" with the syndicalism of George Sorel. This vocal Socialism was nearly .as frightening to the electorate-quite properly-as Moscow-directed Communism. 8 But Fabians appeared in so many desirable liberal connections that they could hardly be believed to be subversive of private . property or of liberty. W.ebb wrote for the Economic Journal, founded and edited by Keynes, as did Fabians W. H.Macrosty, R. H.Tawney, Viscount Haldane, Hugh Dalton, Barbara Wootton, D. W. Robertson, and others. The London School of Economics founded by Webb but left to its own devices in pursuit of truth was after all no Socialist camp of sedition but· a highly respected school becoming world-renowned. Everybody li.ked the NS, if only for its literary articles and good style. The John Scurrs and other Roman Catholic Socialists had no fears. That the Seven spoke like pure-Socialists, that Laski, Shaw, the Fraser group, the Mosleys,9 and Mrs. Webb envisioned an Order governthose who do not bend every political means to the end-the eradication of private ownership, or worker-control.

8 The Clarion, founded by Robert Blatchford and nicknamed U the old Expirer," was devoting itself to Socialism of a Fabian sort but was emphatic that the objective of the Labour Party was to achieve Socialism and not merely a· Socialistic Labour Government. To abolish Capitalism was its constant preachment and its preachers were all Fabians. 9 Mrs. Cole, who writes that she would have become a Communist in 1926, like R. Arnot and F. Horrabin and Ellen Wilkinson, had it not been for their having to take orders from Moscow, impugns MacDonald's Socialism because he liked the company of the great; specifically, e.g., he was" thick" with the Mosleys (Lady Cynthia Mosley was the daughter of Lord Curzon) ; but Mrs. Cole tells of her own pleasure in the households of Frances, Duchess of Warwick (converted to Socialism by Blatchford's criticism of her debut a strong point in our data on the use of psychology especially in abusing personages), and that of the Mitchisons (Mrs. Mitchison was Naomi Haldane) in the ducal luxury of Craignish Castle in Argyl, and in the Italian villa of Doctor Stella Churchill, a Fabian. Cf. her Crowing Up Into Revolution, pp. 139-142, and p. 97 where she states, "I never became a Cotpmunist although I was far from being opposed to them."

440 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 ing " industrial democracy" and creative of the monopoly-opinion of One-Party, that Webb in 1923 had said, "only Socialism will do "; could hardly be known far from Tothill Street and was not taken very seriously at Transport House. That the straddling of issues and pragmatic compromise of Socialist principle on the part of the political leaders \vere rousing criticism from within; that the unions were comn1itted to Socialism by Fabian leadership as well as their ILP mentors were facts hardly understood. So Cardinal Bourne, among the few who saw the meaning of the thesis of the W ebb-Moderates and the harm which would come to unionism from reaction created by an irresponsible leadership, had cause for alarm seeing the syndicalist implication of the term "General Strike." In a sense, when Fabians used this term, " General Strike," it was to humour that section of the Movement which believed it would never be mature until it experienced one. The action of ILP in repudiating 10 the former Labour Prime Minister and the fact that as Tiltman says, corroborated by others, there was a Labour element which had wanted to " try" a General Strike since 1912 11 would have been enough to arouse Cardinal Bourne. That the Strike was not a "General Strike" is the opinion of Fabian Kingsley Martin, who describes the Fabian rather than the public climate of opinion without drawing conclusions; and of ex-Fabian Slesser who argued in Parliament (without MacDonald's sanc tion) ag~inst the opinion of Sir John Simon, which was that the Strike, as a sylnpathy strike, was illegal and so rendered the unions and individuals liable to ruinous fines and the like. That it was intended to coerce Parliament and the Cabinet was never denied, but that it was therefore Revolution, as the Cabinet held~ was always denied .by Fyfe, Martin, Slesser, and general Fabian opinion. The NS held and taught that a successful General Strike without violence was an impossibility. The Cardinal's position was one such as would be formed upon the facts that ILP-ism and Fabian self-critics clearly aimed at obliterating Capitalism, and that the Strike was admittedly aimed at coercing the Government.

The Cardinal was more on the side of the workers than they knew. They were being led into the shambles of R~action.:J.2 1·0 Tiltman, Ope cit.} pp. 266-268. 1'1 Ibid.} p. 252. 12 A strike is considered lawful in Catholic thinking only as a last resort Bet~een 1925. and 1928 441 There is no commentator who adjudges TUCaction all through the Strike agitation, better than stupid or tragic-Thomas, Clynes,' Henderson, 'MacDonald, and Mrs. Cole, and Snowden.13 Mrs. Hamilton .all but ignores it because Henderson played so small a part, merely sitting on the platform with MacDonald when the Strike vote was taken and H going along" because regardless of strategy the wage scale was" the thing." 14 The General Strike came from conditions which were maturing before the Conservative Government was formed in October, 1924. The general economic condition of England was one productive of Trade Union apprehension of a universal attack on wage scales, something which with its unstable equilibrium, the Labour Gov ernment could not have survived. without fission in the Move ment.15 Mrs. Cole in Growing Up Into Revolution says, "Labour, which had declared so loudly that it would cure unem-.

-like war. The, attempt to call this Strike" General" made a general statement incumbent upon the Cardinal. There is no more. moving passage in any of the Labourites' memoirs than that in Ben Tillett's Memories and Reflections (London: John Long, 1931), pp. 147-156, where the work of Cardinal Manning, whom Bourne succeeded, is .recorded in connection with the Dockers' Strike. Bourne countered Statism by encouraging familial societies. 13 But no Labour commentator deals with the real problem of TUC, that of keeping in line men whose ranks were impregnated with Communists who fomented the "direct action." When one finds a bull in a china shop, one should be very calm and quiet oneself. 14 The wage scale was the crux of the matter in the struggle between Labour and the rest from 1926-1931. The standard of living was high for those receiving wages except miners, considerably higher than the price scale warranted. Where Labour advocated world cooperation, more produc tion, wider markets, the Tory mentality in every nation moved steadily toward national s~l£-suffieiency. In England" The Unemployed" served as pawns for both sides while employers argued that labor was an item in cost of production and labor spokesmen merely countered with their power to hold the wage line. Later, after the 1929 Crash, the low price scale came into the argument. It is interesting to speculate what the result might have been if the wage and standard of living scales had been allowed by labor to correlate in 1926-1929under an impulsion of simple nationalism.

15 The attempt to correlate high wage-scales, low living costs and the dole was postponed until reduction of the unemployed benefits became the point of issue, and of fission, in 1931. Labour votes and victories in the con stituencies increased steadily from 1926 to 1929.

442 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 ployment, had not the· slightest idea how to do so "; theref.ore she and her friends formed the S.S.I.P., " to form a group of intelli gent workers for Socialism." 16 The goal they set themselves was a Socialist Government in 1929. The Tories mayor may not have provoked the Strike. Trade Union and sentimental (Weir-type) Socialist opinion is positive that. Baldwin aimed to bring on the Strike once it threatened, or that Baldwin's Cabinet insisted on the strategy despite a possibly more statesman-like attitude on the part of the Prime Minister. A legitimate question arises as to whether Fabian leadership could have prevented this Strike which had been postponed since' 1921. Fabian" leadership of the Party of the Movement knew that labor had nothing to gain from a General Strike; yet no one in the leadership did anything to prevent it from shaping up, although they called it senseless once it had begun.

The crux of the argument falls at the point where peace was at hand and the machine men at the Daily Maill1 walked out. One writer said George Isaacs pleaded in vain against this action. It is possible that the walk-out represented the effort of left-wingers in the Trades Councils under Communist leadership to precipitate the Strike when it was learned TUC was for avoiding it. Every Labourite memoir blames the Government. for refusing to continue negotiations but only now are we learning, "and that fromconnec tions so remote as to appear unrelated, that large segments of the Movement had b.een destroyed by Communism. In 1923-1924, 18 M. Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution, 139. IT The Daily Mail of today appears to· have no record or information to offer on·.the subject. Inquiry was made as to what .larger authority, Trade Councilor. TUGC, these men were responsible, but no reply was forthcoming on this point. If any conspiracy to provoke the strike was suspected, were it of. communist or Trade Council influence, the paper would not hesitate, one should surmise, to state it. On the other hand, if peace were desired, why should the Duke'of Northumberland's mouthpiece have given an inflammatory editorial to the machine men to set up? It was known that the editorial staff was pro-Labour. It is possible that 1) .Tories wanted the Strike to eventuate in order to crush the Movement, and 2) that Communists infiltrated the editorial staff to produce the provoking editorial in order to precipitate the Strike. These latter gave signs of organizational activity in the East End, especially ~here t~ey tried to carry out the Moscow directives to militarize the poor (and defeat the U bourgeois" attempts to U rearm.") Between 192.5 and 1928 443 directives for sovietizing came from Moscow transmitted and executed by the half-breed East Indian-Scandinavian, the skilled dialectician, Ryani Palme Dutt. (He had been associated with the Coles in FRD, now LRD, up to 1923 and was an editor of the Labour Monthly, newly founded and announced in the FN.) II The Communists played their part in the death of the National Guilds League and the Guild Socialist movement . . . .[when] the new othodoxy of the Left split its intellectual protagonist." 18 The Trades Councils, small Labour Parties, and small Trade Union branches had, by 1925, been captured by the Communist Party, which was part of the Third International and Moscow directed. They took tight control because they were ordered to, according to Mrs. Cole who continued to work forLRD (the former FRD) up to 1926, although Douglas had resigned in anger in 1924. LRDhad been won for Communism "by a deliberate campaign." The Coles had re~oved to Oxford, and, during the .General Strike, they devoted themselves to liaison work. This consisted in delivering the Workers Gazette, which Mellor and Fyfe, Fabians H going along" with TUe, got out. They did this in order to keep undergraduate Socialists (Hugh Gaitskell and John Dugdale, among them) from" driving buses and trains for the Government out of sheer boredom." .19 When it is recalled that in' 1923-1925 the NS and most Webb-Shaw-Davies Fabians kept saying Communism should be ignored because it had no labour following, the question arises as to whether the uses of Com munism to destroy what Fabians could not always otherwise con trol were not understood. Mrs. Cole and Douglas and their radical Oxonian students thought of Guild Socialism as' U the, Movement.'" Certainly theWebbs ~nd Henderson, the FN and the NS did not.

The· Strike lasted nine 'days, then the TUGC announced that a satisfactory basis of settlement in the mining industry could be formulated. Reaction set in immediately: Lockouts, failure to rehire, recriminations, followed by the Trade Union Act of 1927.20 18 Margaret Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution, p. 101. 11I.llJid.,pp. lOZ and 122 f. 20 Cf. Slesser, OPt cit., pp. 205-231, where his full analysis of the Act and his adverse opinion of it are set forth at length. On page 231, the If juniors" who. were outstanding in this fight are mentioned. Slesser had little help 444 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 When Tawney wrote-in Labour and the Nation,21 in 1928: "The dangerous revolutionaries are not those who seek power to initiate reforms which are long overdue, but the reactionaries who dam the stream till it bursts its bank in a raging torrent," he omitted a con cluding step in reasoning. While blaming the Liberal Party for its having sacrificed itself to elect a Conservative Government after having endorsed labor-agitated reforms, Tawney and his col leagues failed to note that communists and those who induced a Strike which was illicit intended to put " reaction" to use. Re actionary measures were calculated to drive the unions to desperate direct action. Instead the Fabian leadership of labor in the Party found to hand the advantage that TUC, restrained and. curbed by law, must trust in the Labour Party to extricate it from its bonds.

Only Fabianism gained anything from the Strike. When it' came to passing the Trades Union Act, Slesser fought against it, « the greatest conflict in [his] life," for the reason prin cipally, that he feared the loss of liberty to individual workingmen more than the loss of union strength. He knew he was the" chief expert in England" on labor law. Nevertheless, he had been rele gated· to the charge of "a minute subsidiary provision" in the memorandum which the Party made out to apportion the parts to be taken by Labour Members of Parliament in the fight on the Act. For the rights of men to cease to work when the Union had told them to continue they [Labourites 1 had in the past shown little sympathy. I was determined that the fight should be, at leastin part, upon a deep principle and not be obscured by an over-insistence on trade union rights as such. In the event I was successfu1.22 save from" Mr. Rossyln Mitchell, one of the alertest men in Glasgow, and the most immaculate Socialist member of the House." Mitchell was a Fabian.

2'1 R. H. Tawney, Labour and the Nation (London: The Labour Party) 1928, p. 14. 22 Slesser, Ope cit., pp. 202ff. The contrasting treatment by Webb and by MacDonald of the former Fabian· and historian-to-be of the Liberal Party is indicative of the way Webb tried to use and save all the talent possible for .the Movement while a narrower sectarianism governed others. There is a strong parallel between MacDonald's attitude toward John Wheatley which was maintained aga,inst the better advice of Snowden, and his attitude Behveen 1925 and 1928 445 Expecting the Labour Opposition to end " in vague declamation" and not believing that" this was the desire of the back benches," Slesser rose, though he was not on the Speaker's list, and made " the most important speech I ever made in Parliament" : The Bill prevented free termination of contract, and· limited freedom· to refuse to accept employment, or freedom to collect funds for relief as "furthering a dispute'~; the Act held workmen liable for coercion produced by action on the part of leaders, thus confusing " instrument" and "agent." The Act also confused "General Strike," and "genuine trades dispute" with a sympathy strike.

The Government " forgot" to include legislation. against " general or wide lockouts." In the end, as Slesser predicted, "the Act in practice proved useless" and "the· defeat of the Government in 1929 was largely due to this legislation." 23 No defense of liberty and the Common Law, such as Slesser made, was forthcoming from active Fabians or on the part of the Party. In the light of what has previously been pointed out concerning the need to control the unions on the part of Order-minded Fabians whose politics came so near being "tory," it is small wonder that none. of theac"'" counts portrays the glories of a campaign to repeal the Act nor depicts the defeated ranks of the Socialist-led labor movement going down, heads bloody but· unbent. The Act stayed on the books until 1945. The political-Socialist leadership was apathetic. Macrae-Gibson,24 a Fabian anclan authority on the Whitley Coun cils, disclosed that the Act was designed to prevent unionized' civil sex:-vants from committing their organisation to a Party "with toward Slesser, against the better advice of Webb. John Wheatley was .a Catholic and Harry Slesser quite near becoming a Catholic at the time. The difference was culturally basic.

23 It was not useless as a campaign promise in 1929. Cf. Tawney, Labour and the Nation, pp. 7 and 16. Strangely, the Labour Government of 1929 1931 failed to repeal the Act Even in wartime the TUC continued to demand its repeal (cf. Slesser, Ope cit., p. 225). The Clarion kept urging amendment through 1930; it was finally repealed ,en masse in 1945. Mrs. Cole says this was the Labour Government's only class legislation, an amaz ing statement. 24, Cf. J. H. Macrae-Gibson, "Notes on Administration," The American Political Science Review, XXIII (November, 1929), 922-929, edited by L. D. White of Chicago and subtitled, "The British Civil Service and the Trade Unions Act of 1927."

446 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 the particular aitn of rem0ving all danger that in any event such as the general strike of .1926· Government employees might be called out on strike," and also "to prevent representation of direct civil service interests in the :House of Commons." It was recalled that the Union of Postal Workers and Civil Service Clerical Associa tion. had on' an occasion, selected a constituency for one .. of their members (full~time employees), and had run him for Parliament as a Labour candidate. Macrae-Gibson showed in November, 1929, that the prohibition against affiliating such· a union with a Party was indeed resented, but that to repeal Clause V which was con cerned with this problem, would ··result in "reaction against political commitments, though not in any· reduction of the political activities of the service organisation." This very Fabian docu ment evinced no .Fabian determination to repeal the Act only a concern to placate the Trade Unions to whom the Party, as Macrae-Gibson said, was deeply committed.

Of a certainty, the intellectuals publicly deplored the bungling of TUC leadership which stumbled into the Strike of 1926. It is also certain that "direct-action" sentiment was stirred up against leaders both··iof'the· intelligentsia and of:the Party because ··they curbed the' Strike. l\1acDonald .was read··out· of the ILP and· had to be chosen by the Moray and Nairn Divi'sional Labour Party to .be a delegate to the Conference~ because, as Tiltman 25 says, " Only delegates nominated by the constituent bodies forming the Labour Party' are entitled to vote or to be appointed to any officeon the Party Executive.'r (This disfranchises a there Labour Party sym pathizer and joiner, and obliges him to follow the Conference programme, in the creation. of~hich he, had no· part. ) 'There was no going hack to the Fabians with l\1acDon;lld but his speech before the .General Strike was perfectly Fabian : "No greater calatnity could come over the country",; 26 all should, however, stand by the miners; but the " biggest union" with which to win through, said MacDonald, was "public opinion and reason."

When it was over, Fabia1;1 Mrs. Hamilton \vrote : The failure of the whole strike movement shifted emphasis. ~ackto the political side . Direct action had---25 Tiltman, oft. cit., p.268. 26 Ibid., p. 251.

Between 1925 and 1928 447 been· tried. The general strike idea. had been got out of the system. This was the typical Fabian statement 27 and it reveals the· reason why the Fabians did not preventthe Strike. Soine incidental features of the Strike are to be remarked: Fabian Hamilton Fyfe, in setting up the Workers' Gazette, en counter,ed difficulty with Trade Unionists whom he must employ. They incurred· his wrath by insisting oit union rules and wages even in the emergency. He was assisted in getting out the Workers' Gazette by Fabian William Mellor,28 night editor of the Daily Herald, who did yeoman service. Fabians also assisted officially in continuing to administer a Miners' Relief Fund long after the Strike ended. Listed in August 29 and in November, 30 for instance, were: Sarah Simpson, A.· R. Green, I. Aingren, A. H. May, Miss A. Sloan and P. G. White. These were names of typical persons unknown to fame among the faithful two thousand Fabians; It is significant that the Fabian Society by charitable works kept the sympathies of strikers even while they gave· only lip service to the whole project,as in the Dock Strike long before.

B. THE PROGRAMME OF 1928 Fabian leadership had realigned the Party after 1925. Hender son, surprised and disappointed in the Dissolution, as Mrs. Hamilton believes, took means' to reshape the" rattled" Party. He displaced Ben Spoor, the inept Fabian and disillusioned Wesleyan minister, as Chief Whip; then he ignored the left-swing· toward direct action on the part of TUC and, going against MacDonald, who detested a lC programme," produced 31 a programme to " com pel [the Conference] to face responsibilities," a programme " designed to throw up the major lines of Party policy ... for 21 Ibid., p. 275. 28 He is identified as the FRD member and associate of· the Coles 9uring the War.. He was then a radical Guild Socialist; but he had trained for the Evangelical Ministry. Cf. Margaret Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution, p. 60. 29 FN, 37:8 (August, 1926)~ 30 FN, 37 :~1 (November, 1926). 3'1 Cf. Mrs. Hamilton, Ope cit., pp. 259 ff.

448 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 delegates ... and for the public." A Fabian, T. C. Cramp, who was president of the Conference in 1925, defended the leaders (principally Ma,cDonald) who were then under attack. The floor work at this Conference was admirable. Before Bevin could move his resolution never again to give sanction to "any future minority Government," MacDonald had been put forward with a " series of powerful speeches on constructive issues." Bevin's resolution was lost by two and one-half million· to one-half million votes. (Mrs. Hamilton's logarithms.) 32 MacDonald had been converted to Henderson's " view about programme" which was that an authori tative programme, if it could not prevent the Press from talking nonsense, would protect the candidates and the Party; and it would prevent Labour spokesmen from "talking nonsense." When Harry Pollitt asked for" Socialism in every sentence of it,"

Henderson recalled his own vote of thirty-five years ago for Socialisation of means of production, distribution, and so forth, and added: "We want to get on ... the use of phrases, now that the Party has reached its present stage, is not going to help us." Thus Henderson placated the far left and implied possible dif ference in doctrine between his Socialism and Pollitt' s. The banner of Socialism of thirty-five years ago was not to be re furbished, just taken for granted. To read this Programme, written 1925-1928, is to find that scorn was cast upon those who feared" Socialism" and to find Professor Tawney setting forth his own brand of nationalization or " municipal Socialism" which is identical with what he observed of public ownership in America in 1924.33 82 These votes were given en bloc. It is unfair to count individuals in this instance. One of the greatest reforms of ILO was that carried on by one Monsignor Nolens, Netherland Government delegate, 1928, to reassert in dividual responsibility by individual voting; he U attacked what he called group discipline." Offering consultation instead of hard and fast attitudes, he spoke against secret meetings, abstentions, agreements of minorities to vote with majorities, etc. Cf. (Anonymous), The International Labour Organisation: The First Decade (London: Allen and Unwin, 1931), p; 237.

88 Tawney told in another document of his amazement over what he saw in America in 1924: Federal U controlled" railways, running through State or National Parks to towns where the gas and water were city-owned (he omitted bills paid through banks) ; county schools, part of a State education system where texts were supplied free and where he heard professors from Between 1925 and 1928 449 The drafting of the Programme fell to MacDonald, Lansbury, F. O. Roberts, T. -C. Cramp, Herbert Morrison, Ellen Wilkinson (she was a Communist in 1929, according to Mrs. Cole-but still a Fabian), Oswald Mosley, C. Trevelyan, and Henderson. Six at least were Fabians. H The Mosley star was very much in the ascendant" 8'4: and' he and the charming Lady Cynthia (nee Curzon) were" on close terms of intimacy with the MacDonalds." Mrs. Hamilton thinks Snowden's main differences with Mosley were traceable to the latter's" authoritarian position." The Pro gramme was published as Labour and the Nation, drafted " mainly" by R. H. Tawney.35 According to Henderson's biographer, the debates of that year, 1926, brought into focus two new stars, "not Maxton, not Mosley, but Herbert Morrison and Hugh Dalton"; both of these new stars were Fabians in the entourage of "the Great" at the time when the young FDR was making a pest of itself in the place that was Mr. Pease's boarding house.B6 In this nest of young cuckoos, to use Mrs. Cole's comparison, there was division too.

A word about the philosophy of the Programme: It was built upon the old "worker by hand and brain" idea and upon " doc trineless Socialism." 37 Socialism was a creed by which the stratiState universities praise free enterprise. Cf. Tawney, .the British Labor Movement (Williamstown, Mass.: The Institute of Politics, Williams College, 1924), p. 172. He overlooks the point that all these glories were attained under a liberal not a Socialist II spirit" which his esteemed colleague said in 1923 was the only spirit capable of producing them. U Mrs. Hamilton, Ope cit., p. 262. In the ensuing Thomas-Mosley alterca tion, MacDonald stood by Thomas, as will appear below. 35 Tiltman credits MacDonald with more work on it than Mrs. Hamilton does although she was the author of two biographies of MacDonald. (If Henderson proposed using MacDonald's power, Mrs. Hamilton agreed.) The document was defended against Maxton and Wheatley by MacDonald.

Fabian Mosley was II with them on programme though against them on leadership," according to Mrs. Hamilton, Ope cit., p. 262. Mrs. Cole ha;d a poor opinion of the' document. Its II ammunition [was] largely provided by Lloyd George's Liberal research department." Cf. Growing Up Into Revolu tion, p. 125. (This student finds that Mrs. Cole knew little about Fabians until she grew out of revolution into the NFRB and went on to the recon struction of the Fabian Society of 1939.) 86 Cf. Mrs. Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution, pp. 60 f. 31 Cf. Labour and the NationlP. 6. By seeing men as one class, labor, it 450 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 fied society was· to be striated, as it were. The morality of the creed was " the familiar commonplace that morality is in the nature of things."The Labour Party was, . . . the political organ created to express the needs and voic~the aspirations of .' all who share in the labour which is the lot '·of mankind . . . the force which sustains Isociety·:lsnotpassiveproperty but creative effort ., .

·rand] the Labour Party since it holds that creed is a Socialist "Party . ... [it aims] without violence ... [by ] scientific knowledge . . . [at the] deliberate estab lishm,e1}.t ... of a social order ... to secure ... the Jargest;possible measure of economic welfare and personal freedom.38 The .Progratllme, }Vhich did not envision in "welfare" and" free dprn" freedom for ",Economics," or personal liberty, became H~nd~rs()n's "bqokof words," says hi~ Fabian biographer. This is ,'",nderstandable especi(.lllysince a relic of the Geneva Protocol, the Optional Clause, Disarmament, and Recognition of Russia w~realso 'embodied in. this, Fabian Tawney's articulation of I~abour's .aims. ~t expressed no regret about. the Geneva Protocol, only that itscontinge.ntDisarmam,ent Conference did not transpire in 1925.39 Mrs. Hamilton terms the objective of the Party the "union of labour and learning." She points out that MacDonald, like Henderson, " believed in Socialism," but unlike Henderson did not think it would work. Yet Henderson, who affirmed if he did not confirm his Socialism, believed still more in the. Party, and was "a marvelous stage-manager." A chief problem had been the Press which had played up two ideas: 1) Trade Union's General Conference had .swung far left toward Direct Action in 1925; 40 fell short of the principle of vocation which Slesser found in St. Thomas and sought in. vain· in "industrial democracy." It made men to be horizon tally ,ordered as .workers by hand, by brain, by initiative, by experiment, on farm, mine, or factory. It did not conceive of a perpendicular ordering wherein, creating the Product, for the. Common Good, men follow a vocation grouped .in a family-ordered way ranged from the Capitalist to the grease monkey in united .effort toward getting out a product for the good of all and to make a contribution. to society. Cf. Oldmeadow, op. cit., passim.

38 Cf. Labour and the Nation, pp. 5 f., italics supplied. 89 Ibid., p. 44. '40 Cf. Mrs. Hamilton, op. cit., p. 259. It is a great pity that the noble Between 1925 and 1928 451 and 2) "MacDonald must go," which was also a part of the ostensible Communist line. It was .Fabianism which realigned all in order to gradualness. It retained and confirmed Trade Union ism. again under a Programme nominally Socialistic. It retained the leader, whom ILP had repudiated because he favored political over socialistic action, because the liberal core of England believed he could do better than Baldwin in handling the European situa tion.4-1 Labour and. the Nation chided Russia for intervening in·· the internal problems of other nations but demanded full trade' with U.S~S.R.; it also asked aid for "the Chinese people and the world" not for " financial groups belonging to imperialist foreign Powers," to prevent the revolt of Asia against the West. The name calling can be but subterfuge. H People" and H world-" have to find implementation ,vhich any. displeased group may denigrate with terminology. These are the times when Albert Thomas was journeying in the. interest of the International Labour Office (but qualities of Labour and theNation cannot be delineated here. It is a greater pity that some group which had no objectionable philosophies such as that this was an age H clamant" for a H secularist way of life," did not adopt so dYnamic a policy toward the very real need for education free from unfair class distinctions from cc Nursery to University," (Ibid., p. 37);· or strike out boldly for efficient production (not merely for price), (p. 49).

Perhaps it would be fairer to say it was a pity that this dynamic group which assumed responsibility for their brothers' welfare was a group histori cally deprived of religious literacy. ~1 In internationalism, Mrs. Hamilton believed, must lie the cure .for England's ills~ She credited Stresemann with the conception of the Locarno Treaties and D'Albernon with H help," censured·Austen Chamberlain for the return of Poincare, and the Government for dwindling trade with Russia following the Arcos raid, the abrogation of the "treaty (of· 1924), and the increasing acerbity of Franco-German relations induced by Anglo-French conversations. She never mentioned the Anglo-German Trade Treaty, the floating in London and New York of loans, and selling of bonds of German States and municipalities which owned the German coal fields, nor investment by Englishmen of every party in these bonds. So long as this. crux was not embraced, any debate about solving miners' .unemployment was sure. to be only a bid· for power. Mrs. Hamilton is the typical Fabian following· the Party line .unreasoningly. As late at. 1938, she should surely be responsible for the perusal ofD'Abernon's Diaries which came out in 1929-1931. She does not cite them ; perhaps she misinterprets 0'Abernon's role out of parti sanship..

452 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 also in the interest of the Labour and Socialist International) into China, to learn that China, while not Capitalistic, was not in favor of the Third International. Where a warlord of South China im puted to the Second International the blame for the non-integra tion of Europe and China, Thomas was explaining to him the H democratisation" of Capitalist industrial life in Europe. 42 Part of the reinforcement of Labour's prestige from 1926 to 1929 was due to the reconstruction of the Second International. When Russian dictatorship drove out of the H Two-and-a-Half" Adler, Longuet and their followers, Henderson collected this added strength for the Second, but not without MacDonald's It magnificent sparring matches with the giants of the Third," Radek and Bukharin. Fabian C. R. Buxton also accompanied Henderson "on international journeyings." Fabian Susan Lawrence witnessed his "ovation" one day in the Conference in Brussels in· 1928, a day when Henderson, after a .purple-spotted harangue by Vandervelde, holding a "wad of typescript," read a speech in his "usual one-tone, level, sonorous voice." 43 Inter national political aspects kept the Labour Party united and inter ested while interest in the· other Parties lagged because they took a great deal for granted from 1925 to 1929. "From the Shet lands . . . to Lands End, . . . the country [was] covered by a network of Labour Party Organisations." These were flattered no doubt by being consulted if not merely indoctrinated on inter national attitudes. International considerations resulted in Hen derson's becoming head of the Foreign Office in 1929.

Mrs. Hamilton takes her subject out of the country for the Baldwin interval. .If Fabian reactions to the passing of the Trade Unions Act of 1927 and to the Poor Law Reforms of 1928 were all but apathetic, their negative position was more marked and bore clearer markings on certain socio-religious issues. There took place a fight over Catholic relief and on the Prayer Book, 42 Cf. Edward J. Phelan, Albert Thomas et la Creation du B.l.T. (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1936), pp. 290 f. It shows the catholicity· of Socialism. Thomas did not walk alone. His path often crossed that of Borodin in China. In 1929 Stalin had 1500 "agrarian" Chinese boys being educated at the expense of U.S.S.R. in the Far East University in Moscow. 43 Mrs. Hamilton, op. cit., p. 279. "This was John Bull!" Mrs. Hamilton interprets the ovation.

Between 1925 and 1928 453 matters which served to bring out Fabian indifferentism and materialism. As described by Slesser,44:the secularism, i.e., abso lute religious indifference of Socialist and Fabian thought is marked, especially on the Prayer Book question and on Birth Control. Slesser was an Anglo-Catholic at the time and failed, as did Protestant Rosslyn Mit~hell, to cut through the mists of confusion in this argument. Mitchell, cited verbatim by Slesser,4:5 said that [reservation of consecrated Wafer and wearing of vest ments to signify] was' transubstantiation, and that was the dividing. principle between the two churches. If the Church of England wanted that, then let her have it . . . but' if she did not want it, then she could not pass this Book. In one generation, with the Deposited Book, they could swing over all the children of England from the Protestant Reformed Faith to the Roman Catholic Faith.

Of the Labour M.P.'s, Slesser says, Their Roman Catholic associates they tolerated, regret fully, as persons otherwise supporting Labour, but pos sessed of exotic unintelligible views which had received the toleration of time and Act of Parliament. 46 The Party leadership by means'" minatory and appellant " tried to keep Slesser from debating at all. Fabian Henderson was more of a Party man than a Fabian. The women in the Movement, whom often he had to placate--or submit to their revilings as he cheerfully did at times-were probably more Fabian than Party minded. In 1927, their demand to have Birth Control instruction sponsored by the Ministry of Health, was defeated by Henderson's reasoning that" those sacred issues that came into direct conflict with the religious convictions of. multitudes of our members" had always been kept outside. However, the ladies always won their point when he was absent.

One of his greatest platform achievements was getting a reversal of what had carried in his absence on. the Birth Control issue. "Slesser, op. cit., pp. lOS if. 45 Ibid., pp. 132 £. 48 Ibid., p. 134.

454 Fabianism in the Political Life of Britain 1919-1931 Henderson argued effectively against injecting religious and do mestic matters into a political party platform. He knew of course that it would not do to alienate the Catholics in the Party. Slesser describes their attitude in Parliament 41 where their" expression" of the Catholic viewpoint was "allowed" by the Party. (An effort was made to disallow Slesser's voicing identical views because he was not a Catholic.) This was another of the points where, by compromise, the majority consensus was not allowed to offend supporters and the unity of the Party was protected, by Fabian skill.48 We must turn to Keith Feiling to learn of the constructive re forms carried out by Neville Chamberlain in the Ministry of Health, and to the N S or The Clarion to find out what was its Fabian reaction, seeing the subjects they had long agitated carried through by others. The Poor Law was altered to cope with the " new" poor and to defeat Popularism. Popularism, in Fabian Lansbury's way of thinking, was the correct way of dealing with the poor, i.e., by not merely providing relief-" outdoor relief "-: but by subsidizing a life such as the Lord intended them to have, as he said. Even more shocking than the conditions at Poplar where Lansbury's system brought it about that ". marriages were made and children maintained, on the dole,"N eville Chamberlain found "sovietized" sections in Chester-Ie-Street in Durham where the large Labour majority had used their power to subsidize wages, [ignoring family collective.earnings] to favour trade unionists . . . [At the time of the Gen eral Strike] they constituted themselves an emergency committee, distributed relief to almost the whole mining population .... regardless of private means, and sus pended officers who refused to break the law. It looked 41 Slesser, op. cit., p. 151.

48 Susan Lawrence wrote a novel, Clash, to tell the inner story ·of the Strike. She describes· the environs of the Hall where the Strike vote was to be taken and she includes among the persons milling about, the "inevita ble" women peddling birth control literature. In 1949 the Labour Govern ment had to repel the notion that contraceptive vending machines were favored by the Health Ministry. Fabians Tillett, Lansbury, and Turner deplored the complication of political Socialism with the free-thinking do mestic sociology of some socialists.

Between 1925 and 1928 455 as if a trade union masquerading as guardians, were financing an industrial -dispute out of -. public funds.· 9 The reorganization of poor relief on lines of Local Government with the abolition of Boards of Guardians was the fruit of long . pressure coming from W. A. Robson's Local Government Bureau of the Fabian Society, and from the ever-increasing circulation of Local Government News, his organ; 50 and it meant for the Webbs the end of -three decades of agitation for the control of destitution. They appraised it in an Epilogue to their English Local Government in 1928. But in doing so, they left unanswered their own question. Should the unemployable be treated with a . , disciplinary attitude or supported for poltical reasons? This was the old unanswerable riddle of industrial democracy. TheWebbs raised the question with the greatest acuity and realism and with out the slightest allusion to the possibility that an answer lay in agriculture. They ignored even the projects Lansbury had de veloped successfully. Untroubled, they left the question un answered. But the concept of U the masses " had been _crystallized in El].gland's garden-variety socialism.

•9 Cf. Feiling, op. cit.~ pp. 139 f. ~ Cf. F.S.A.R., 1924-1931,where this is reiterated withc1assical.formula tion not to speak of the history of the Poor Law agitation by the Webbs who thanked the Baldwin Government for the Act outlawing "outdoor relief" at last, in the English Local Government of 1928, p. 985. The Webbs and Ellen Wilkinson (famed in Poplar history) approved Neville Ch~mberlain's system of audit and control. Cf. Feiling, op. cit., p. 141.