NeXt week the . annual Conference of the Labour Party will
be held at Liverpool. It is being anticipated with deep interest and a good deal of anxiety. The Trade Union Congress at Scarborough took a decided tilt to the left, and everyone wants to know whether the Labour Party at Liverpool will restore the balance. On the whole we expect that this will happen, for the Labour Party officials are mostly moderate. But it must be admitted that the Minority Movement is making an effort to cap- ture the Labour Party. Let us be in no doubt as to what the Minority Movement wants. It is tragic to think of all it is ready to throw away in the striving after a new thing. For g enerations the hand-workers struggled for more adequate representation under the Parliamentary franchise. Every demand they put forward was in true democratic form. They recognized that Parliament was the source and focus of all political power and that the millennium itself could not be reached except by the decision of the majority. Knowing that they formed a majority in themselves they felt that they had a good prospect of success, as indeed they had—and have. Their claims for better representation were perfectly justifiable and readers of history can look back now with amusement to the panic caused by such an essentially constitutional movement as that of the Chartists. Full democracy has been attained, and what it has done for the condition of England is remarkable.
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