Leaders of British Labor

I

THERE remains Labor. Three years ago I remarked that a great political genius, with no point of view but that of the architect, would prefer the materials offered by the Labor Party to any at present available. I still adhere to that opinion. The decay, apparently irremediable, of the older aristocracy, the loss of political power and, still more, of political instinct by the middle classes, have given the English masses an immense preponderance, in political keenness as well as in numbers, of which some great man is sure, sooner or later, to avail himself.

There are spiritual qualities in ‘Labor,’ which, properly used, would give it, under adequate leadership, a power and a dignity at least equal to those of any of the historic parties. The better kind of British workingman is that rarest of beings, a patriot who loves his own country more than he hates others. His ‘internationalism’ is all on the surface; he is at bottom the most English thing in England. Knowing that he has to live in his country, whatever betides, he has no motive, as the commercial classes too often have, to calculate national prosperity in the terms of profit earned at the nation’s ultimate cost. It is true that, being in touch with the sternest realities of life, he cannot afford to look far ahead; for him the daily wage must always be the first question. But, apart from his absorbing interest in the meat that perishes, he is a romantic and an idealist; fair-minded, altruistic, remarkably free from envy, malice, and uncharitableness, and possessed of a fervent desire, as well as capacity, to admire what he can genuinely recognize as superior. Under a leader of fine intellect and heroic temperament, British Labor could, without great shock or destruction, achieve a social rearrangement far exceeding in thoroughness and beneficence any of which British history bears record.

As things are, however, the Labor Party is but an embodied satire on the natural and legitimate aspirations of the English masses. It has achieved a considerable Parliamentary representation, and it may well win a good many seats at the next election. At the byelections, alone among the parties, it has revealed great accessions of strength independent of local and temporary factors. But the larger grows the phalanx of heavy trades-union leaders in the House of Commons, the less moral and intellectual weight Labor seems to possess in the councils of the nation. Its Parliamentary representatives are deficient in almost everything that counts in a popular assembly — in enthusiasm, industry, debatingpower, tactical ability, and sense of values. They derive a certain strength from their personal integrity, using the word in its most narrowly material sense; for, though a Labor vote is often stupid, it is seldom venal; and the worst that can be generally alleged against the class of workingman M. P.’s is that they have latterly tended to wind up as rather highly paid civil servants.

For intellectual honesty, however, they are not distinguished; and, without charging them, as Lord Birkenhead did, with ‘consistent and abject poltroonery,’ it is impossible to acquit them of failing, in face of the great problems of the last few years, to see and act straightly. The fault is possibly due rather to mental confusion than to moral obliquity. Certainly, in the case of Mr. Arthur Henderson, whose retention of his primacy during so many checkered years is a signal reproof to those who charge the masses with inconstancy, the head is rather at fault than the heart. Mr. Henderson is thoroughly well-meaning, and as little unremindful of his moral responsibilities as Mr. Pecksniff. But he is afflicted in a rather unusual degree with a common British characteristic, that ‘ woolliness’ of mind which, though perhaps of some advantage in practical politics, makes the speculative essays of so many British politicians an astonishment to the outside world.

Mr. Henderson has read many times the Sermon on the Mount; and, in his capacity as Wesleyan local preacher, has given his own valuable comments thereon. He has also read, with perhaps less mastery, certain abridgments of the works of Karl Marx and his commentators; and, like the authority on Chinese metaphysics, he tries to ‘combine the information.'

Unfortunately, he is dealing with things that simply will not combine; and in consequence Mr. Henderson suffers from what Mr. Chesterton once wittily described as a literally splitting headache — a permanent schism in the mind that produces a habitual inconsistency. He can scarcely speak without contradictions, which are obscured only by the vague and cloudy character of his rhetoric. We are to have perfect freedom for all, combined with universal compulsion. There is to be national control of the means of production, but no ‘bureaucracy.’ The ‘biggest incomes and fortunes’ are to be the main source of revenue, but Labor will incessantly work to make big incomes and fortunes as impossible as they are inequitable, and ‘the notion of private gain’ must be replaced by ‘the notion of public service.’ On the subject of taxation, indeed, Mr. Henderson’s ideas are as simple as those of any old-time dey of Algiers. He seems to regard ‘big incomes’ as a sort of spontaneous growth, encouraged rather than checked by hard grazing. On no other assumption can we reconcile his desire to ‘eliminate profiteering’ with his promise to make the profiteer pay the bulk of the expenses of what would certainly be a most expensive form of government.

More artfully concealed, but scarcely less fundamental, is the trouble which sterilizes the considerable abilities of Mr. J. R. Clynes. His case is not Mr. Henderson’s. He speaks much too clearly to think muddily; and if he were always free to give the counsel he would desire, British Labor would be viewed with less suspicion than it is to-day. But Mr. Clynes, with many excellent qualities, — moderate, quick of vision, and as intellectually honest as he can afford to be,-has hardly the substance to be a leader who leads. There is too much difference between the speeches in which he thinks it safe to say what he thinks and those in which he says only what his followers like to think that he thinks.

After all, there are ample excuses. More than any of his fellow ex-Ministers, Mr. Clynes in office displayed the essential qualities of statesmanship — courage, judgment, initiative, and a capacity for noncommittal coöperation with people who may be the opponents of to-morrow. He has, too, a dignity which might not be inferred from the first glance at his insignificant figure and small, sharp, terrier-like face. That such a man should be too often obliged to argue on lines which obviously fail to appeal to his understanding is sufficient indication of the servitude which present conditions impose on those who purport to lead Labor.

Mr. J. H. Thomas, the divinity who shapes the ends of all who work on railways, is almost the only other figure on the Labor Bench who counts, since Mr. Brace, the splendid, became a Government servant, and could indulge without proletarian criticism his taste for a good cigar and a tolerable picture. Though, as a trades-union leader, there are few to vie with him in clear perception, both of his own interests and those of his men, Mr. Thomas, like the other Labor leaders, is, on his political side, a man of double vision. Mr. Thomas, indeed, has a multiplicity of personalities. He is an organizer of extraordinary talent, who achieved almost a miracle in uniting all the separate railway trade-unions (each representing a social division much more marked than that which distinguishes a marquess from a baronet) into a single organization. He is a trained and skillful negotiator. He can be, when he likes, a rampant demagogue, whose ‘warnings’ at first sight seem scarcely distinguishable from incitements, although at the last his word is always for prudence and for peace. He is a revolutionary, who proposes to work by evolution, and fears no ‘riotous breaking from old ways’ — or, at all events, ‘only in the passing stage.’

But he is also — most important of all — a thoroughly middle-class person, who likes flattery, and values the fact that he can always get breakfast at the Prime Minister’s table. The two understand each other, as Welshmen and old friends, exceedingly well; and when there has been a crisis in the railway world, Mr. Lloyd George has probably slept the better through his confidence in the essential respectability of Mr. Thomas.

Mr. Henderson was, a very long time ago, a moulder. Mr. Clynes once won a scanty wage as a ’little-piecer ’ in a Lancashire cotton factory. Mr. Thomas, an errand-boy at nine, was an engine-cleaner in his later teens. All of them are now in comfortable enjoyment of incomes which, however far from excessive, are by no means contemptible. To arrive at their present positions they have gone through much. No labor is more exacting, no routine more wearisome, no self-suppression more repulsive, than the labor, the routine, and the self-suppression of a Labor leader.

Is it rational to expect those who have won through, by patience, tact, persuasiveness, and pliability, such as no ambassador was ever called on to display, to be wanting in the defects of their qualities? Can such men be supposed to mean the things they constantly have to say? Can they be imagined as earnestly bent on social changes which, desirable or undesirable, can assuredly be compassed only at the cost of much sweat, and perhaps some blood?

II

No. British Labor’s time, it seems to me, is not yet; nor will it come until it has thrown up from its own ranks, or attracted within its orbit, one whom it is prepared to accept, and one who is worthy to act, as its master. It is not by those who repeat formulas, and especially borrowed and alien formulas which they only half understand and do not half believe,—which is certainly the case with the British Labor leaders and Marxian Socialism, — that great democratic movements come about. History tells us that no great outburst of democratic zeal is evoked except by great and simple men, with a great and simple message, to deliver which they are ready to risk all, even their respectability. And that sort of man is seldom found among those who have plodded their way, with patience and caution, from a lowly position to one simply comfortable. The great popular leader is often a damaged aristocrat. He is sometimes an eccentric man of wealth. He is sometimes a genius from the depths. Men who have had much will gamble their last crown through despair. Men who have much will gamble their last crown through tedium. Men who have never had anything will stake the only thing they can risk — their lives. But the man whom, of all others, we least expect to play a big game of any kind is the one who, starting from nothing, has become the possessor of a few hundreds in first-class securities, and the master of a nicely furnished little home. Of such are the Labor leaders who, at one moment, call for the resignation of the most profligate of capitalistic Governments, and the next (at a hint of dissolution) cry, in effect, ’Oppressors of the people, conscienceless despots, how dare you put us about, and threaten us with a further run on sorely depleted funds, by talking of giving us an early opportunity to destroy you?’

Such, as it appears to my judgment, is a not unfair presentment of the political conditions in Great Britain to-day. If it be true that the Government is so wanting in any principle of vitality that it would fall at a blow, or even at the blast of any trumpet giving forth a not uncertain sound, it seems also true that there is no arm strong enough to strike the blow, and no mouth capable of forming a genuine note of defiance.

One real thing, it is true, remains, and it would be capable in a short time of communicating reality to other things. I mean, of course, the so-called Die-Hard Conservatism. These people represent something in certain respects rather stupid, but also something very genuine and vital. They are, for the time, deprived of their natural organs by the adherence of all possible leaders (with the notable exception of Mr. Bonar Law) to the Coalition; but it is not improbable that, like those other organisms that walk backward, — the respectable family of crabs, — they will shortly develop new limbs — and claws.

Something over a year ago, I suggested that Mr. Lloyd George, ‘the born explosive of party union and builder of flying bridges between incompatibles,’ as a witty critic has called him, was ambitious of stinging British Toryism into paralysis, without actually killing it, so that he might, like the ichneumon fly, provide living pabulum for some political larva of his own production. That scheme has now failed, obviously and finally. Genuine British Toryism does not mean to be killed or paralyzed. It is, on the contrary, the only British party with a definite aim, and that aim is most definite. It is simply to rid itself, by any means, and at the first possible moment, of the Lloyd George connection.

Unless Mr. Bonar Law should decide to help it, however, it can hardly emancipate itself by the time an election comes. It must, therefore, be assumed that the Coalition will go to the country in its present form, and secure a majority. But the conditions of the next Parliament will not be the conditions of this. The dependence of the Prime Minister on Conservatism will be much more marked; the independence of individual Conservatives will be correspondingly accentuated; a large party of very definite convictions, unfavorable to continued coalition, will form; and it is not consistent with any theory of political human nature that some clever man, either in the Coalition or without, will refuse the opportunity open to him who becomes its leader.

British political conditions are so singular, the character of the Prime Minister is so incalculable, that it would be foolish indeed to attempt to predict the precise development of the movement toward stable equilibrium which is undoubtedly beginning. The possibilities of minor complications produced by the final burst-up of the Coalition are almost as numerous as the ways of arranging how, in a train carrying five hundred people, two hundred can travel with their faces and two hundred with their backs to the engine. But one or two conclusions seem to be justified.

There will reëmerge, sooner or later, a genuine Conservative party, of which Mr. Lloyd George will not be the leader, partly because he is not wanted, partly because he can hardly acquire, at his time of life, the accent of Toryism. The mere existence of this party will tend to reconsolidate Liberalism, which still represents the habitual mood of a large body of the British people, and represents even the British people itself in certain of its moods. Labor, until it has produced its man, seems destined to continue a rather niggling and ineffective Ishmaelite.

It will be observed that no allowance has been made for the factor of Mr. Lloyd George’s personality. I am, indeed, disposed to think that, once he is out, he will remain out. His ascendancy depends on the prevalence of turmoil. There was a certain truth in his description of himself as a stormy petrel, whose element is the tempest. He has always not only made his best figure, but prospered best, in conditions of crisis. During the latter years of the war, every reverse only added to his security; and it is hardly unfair to say that, since the Armistice a quarterly political sensation has been necessary to maintain his prestige. The country, however, shows unmistakable signs that its nerves will no longer respond to stimulus; it wants, above all, sleep; and, once it has sunk into much needed repose, Mr. George will be at a disadvantage. Clever as he is, there is one thing Nature has put beyond his power. He can do nothing without a brass band, and his sheer incapacity for quiet routine must tell against him with John Bull, when that much-tried personage has got his head well on the pillow.