Thank you for correcting the text in this article. Your corrections improve Papers Past searches for everyone. See the latest corrections.

This article contains searchable text which was automatically generated and may contain errors. Join the community and correct any errors you spot to help us improve Papers Past.

Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image

The Labour Movement from Inside.

Most of the books printed nowadays dealing with the Labour question are written either by Socialist observers who are largely without experience as active workers in tho Labour movement, or else by active workers whose volumes consist in the main of abstract speculation with very little in the way of intimate facts or intimate history. Mr Shaw Desmond haß produced quite a new study of modehi labour in England in his new book, "Labour: the Giant with the Feet of Clay." He has been a member of the Labour Party since 1906, and has been an active speaker and worker at street corners and in congresses. He has participated in politics 88 a Socialist candidate, and has given his whole life to a study of the Labour movement. He says in his foreword that he is still a socialist, but many years experience of the Labour movement has forced him to the conclusion that the Labour movement is on the wrong track and the democrats are killing democracy. He has met

practically every Labour leader of any prominence in recent years, and knows them all personally and very well. The result is that his book is an extraordinarily interesting and personal study of Labour progress along the road which comes after the wrong turning. The essence of his theory is the proposition that the strength of a party is determined not by numbers but by convictions, and he has discovered, what has indeed been obvious to most clearheaded observers outside the Labour movement, that Labour, both in leadership and in the rank and file, is hopelessly at odds with itself, and deficient in any clear ideas which will bring it to such a victory as the public spirited section of the socialists wish for it. He explains why the average workingman votes for the Labour Party. He does &o in nine cases out of ten, not booaußo iho i 3 kept awake o 1 nights thinking" about the undertrodden proletariat—he doesn't know what the word "proletariat" means*—or because he wantß a now heaven on an old earth. He does eo because ho wants more money for less work. That is tho brut 3 faot.

Those politicians and liabour leaders who imagine that they can successfully exploit this instinct are bound for disaster unless they can actually improve the conditions of the whole State, and at the same time improve the mental and moral conditions of the workers. This is Mr Desmond's conclusion: —

But when the drums once more begin to I beat in Europe, and the guns begin to thunder, the British Labour leaders at least, ami whatever the Continental Labour leaders may do, despite all their pretences of international brotherhood, despite their ostrich-like policy of refusing to face the facts of war, and even because they 'have so refused and in the refusing have given no lead, to tho workers—will once more discover that the masses of those workers at the tap of tho drum will follow the flag as they havo followed it before, will forget their parrot-lessons of an internationalism, the idealist spirit of which they have never understood, and will once more tread the awful path to "death or glory." .... If the Labour leaders want full demonstration of tho fatuity of their belief that Demos will win his way to lib arty primarily through improvement of bis material conditions, or that he is yet ready to take, powor, they ihave only to look at tho facts of the war. When the European workman was receiving double wages in certain countries, and especially in the neutral countries, during the war, as the writer had opportunity to observe, he did not spend Tiis increased raonoy on books or self-improvement, but on food and beor and pleasure. Those who during tho war visited countries l\ke Holland and Denmark will not readily forg»t the deterioration of large sections of the working-classes in those countries, duo to the way in, whioh they wasted their increased wages. Demos may beat his way to power through the bludgeon of the mass-vote. Ho may ore day, and certainly will one day, find himself seated enthroned in Westminster as m (he Amerioan Congress Chamber, tho Chanibor of Deputies, and the other parliaments of the world. But when ho has reached his anjbition ho will find himself farther than over from his goal, and it may even bo that his failure may throw democracy once more into the melting pot and see a recoil to the Blaveatate. He will find, as all mankind has found throughout the centuries, that revolutions are made not behind the barricade but in the brain; not in the holding up of hands Vut by the slow and tortuous evolution of mind and spirit—in other words, by that third road of "Self-development" so uninviting and so difficult. To modify even the shape of a. finger, nature, with eternity before her, takes her thousands of years. To modify the shape of * man's mind, she mav take her hundreds. Demos to-day, despite all his massing l together, despite or even because of the very words on his lips of "brotherhood" and "democracy," and his "material" improvement, is still, in the mass, essentially unchanged from the Demos of yesterday. Within the last fifty vears we have seen this Winded giant, raising himself on his belly, struggling blindly towards the light, only within the last decade once more to sink down again into the dust—the dust of direct action and the mass-vote—-whilst, coming up from behind, his comrades, like him, blinded, unheeding, trample him still deeper as they press forward towards the will o' the wisps of modern Democracy.

It is not a book which will give great encouragement to the average Labour leader, and of course it is most unlikely ever to have any effect upon the rank and file of the workers, but a future generation, while enjoying the vigorous and brilliant writing of the Author, and his sketches of the many curious and interesting Labour figures of the past generation whom he describes, are likely to find it a vision of truths which, will by then have been generally recognised.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19220401.2.40

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17419, 1 April 1922, Page 10

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,032

The Labour Movement from Inside. Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17419, 1 April 1922, Page 10

The Labour Movement from Inside. Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17419, 1 April 1922, Page 10

Help

Log in or create a Papers Past website account

Use your Papers Past website account to correct newspaper text.

By creating and using this account you agree to our terms of use.

Log in with RealMe®

If you’ve used a RealMe login somewhere else, you can use it here too. If you don’t already have a username and password, just click Log in and you can choose to create one.


Log in again to continue your work

Your session has expired.

Log in again with RealMe®


Alert