DIRECT ACTION AGAIN.
THE vote of the Trade Union Congress on Tuesday in favour of " Direct Action " need not be taken at all tragically. The delegates at the Congress have accustomed themselves by the practice of years to vote in favour ofideals which they have no hopes of realising. Everyone of, of the long list of hardy annual resolutions which for a generation have been voted almost as a matter if religious faith. These things have been like the report 3f a company :meeting which is " taken as read." The lelegates seldom even troubled to discuss the most airy fabric of their dreams. On Tuesday therefore the delegates were in a mood to vote, after all, for direct action without exposing themselves to any intense shock if their dream should not come true. In form the majority of the delegates snubbed the Parliamentary Committee as being a 7eactionary body standing in the way of the new policy 3f direct action which is bred out of magnificent new'angled ideas and is fired by the thoughts of dauntless youth. Nevertheless, the Parliamentary Committee, and ill those who believe in what the Parliamentary Committee represent, have only to be patient and they will win, because right is on their side.
The victory of Mr. Smillie and his friends was really a Pyrrhic victory—a few moreisuch victories and he will be ruined. Anyone who looks into the figures will see that this is so. The majority of three to two is not enough, or anything like enough, to bring off Mr. Smillie's revolutionary scheme of direct action. Of course Mr. Smillie may choose to persist, but in that case he will split the Labour Party from top to bottom ; he will shatter its strength and will deprive the Labour Party of all prospects of coming Into power for many years. If the desire of Labour is, as we suppose it must be, to form a Labour Government as soon as possible, Labour will need not only all its existing strength, but more strength than it has' ever shown in the past. People sometimes forget how relatively small is the electoral. power commanded by Labour. Labour no doubt has the potential power to do virtually anything, but it has never yet acquired the actual power. Look at the result of the last General Election. The Labour votes cast against the Coalition Government were only 2,374,385, Whereas the total number of votes cast in the election were 9,681,011. Mr. Smillie, while paradoxically boasting the _word " democracy," may threaten direct action against the whole community—threaten, that is to say, to hold up the whole community if it does not do what a few persons want—but when it comes to dealing with his comrades in the Labour movement he Must convince them by persuasion or fail. He cannot employ direct action against' them. The simple truth Which' Mr. Smillie ought to meditate upon is that those who might have voted for Labour at the General Election 'did hot do so in sufficient' numbers. It is useless for rail against the Government and say that he will bring then' to their senses by means of violence atd paralysis. He ought to rail against those who voted wrong. The voters had their chance and they chose the Coalition by an overwhelming majority. The proper course for Mr. Smillie to pursue—the only course which will bring, him respect and authority in the long run—is for him to teach people to vote better at the next General Election and at all byelections.
Let there be no mistake about it; Labour is now making its bed and as it makes it so will it have to lie upon it. When Labour is able to form a Government it will have stability and confidence in proportion as it enjoys the electoral support of the people. But what will be its position if it has spent the years before its access to power in undermining the whole electoral system ? It will find in a very few weeks that its authority will have to rest upon espionage and machine guns. It is the genius of the British people to demand in their rulers commonsense and honesty. They may put up for a time with rulers who show neither of these qualities, but all the time they are uneasy and resentful in their hearts and are looking about for better men to rule them. Labour will not be an exception to this wholesome condition and it will make the greatest mistake in the world if it expects to be. Mr. Smillie mistakes, or acts as though he mistook, the voice of the Labour machine for the voice of the people ; but the voice of the Labour machine under the misleading system of card votes is not really representative of Trade Union labour and cannot even pretend to represent that large mass of labour which still stands outside the unions.
Mr. Clynes said a very informing thing on Tuesday when he remarked that there were more than three hundred Labour candidates at the General Election and that the candidates did worst in those constituencies where there had been most Labour unrest. It would be worth while, we think, to find out why for months past certain Labour leaders have been making such a strong point of opposing the campaign in Russia. It is not because the question of conscription is at stake. The British soldiers in Russia are volunteers—they need not have gone there if they had not wished. No doubt some ofthose serving in Russia say that such strong pressure was exercised on them to go that they felt there was no alternative, but if this surprising statement be true in some cases there is not at the present moment any issue of conscription. It is a very strange fact that on many Labour platforms the campaign in Russia is mentioned first as though it were one of the most deadly grievances of British Labour at home. We have little doubt ourselves thst the propaganda of Russian Bolsheviks has had more influence in this country than many people suppose. A short time ago an official statement was made by a Government department about the existence of this propaganda and several newspapers set to work to laugh the information away and to write of the intervention of the Government department as an impertinence. We do not say for a moment that Mr. Smillie or his friends have accepted money from the Bolsheviks. On the contrary, we believe they have not. But an atmosphere favourable to Bolshevism has been created in some degree by Russian money and Russian agents, and this atmosphere is being breathed by many of our own La bour people who draw from it, more or less unconsciously, the oxygen which vitalizes all their movements.
A minor but none the less interesting fact in the proceedings of the Trade Union Congress has been the alarm of the speakers lest they should seem to set any store by the praise which has been bestowed on those Labour leaderswho have been telling the workers the truth and urging them to more rapid production. There has been something like a panic about praise. For those of us who are critics of the daily life of the nation this has become a somewhat delicate and embarrassing matter. We do not want to handicap those whom we praise by making them suspect. On the other hand we cannot altogether go out of our business of watching and criticizing any affairs which affect the wellbeing of the whole nation. Perhaps it is best to be simple rather than subtle, and just to go on saying what we think is right and what we think is wrong without apprehensions' as to the ultimate recoil of our remarks. The man in a' panic always behaves foolishly ; and so if there are Labour men panicky enough to advocate evil rather than good on the ground that the evil thing will not receive the praise of capitalists and lords and bishops and employers and the middle classes, nothing will save them. from being silly till they get out of their panic. It is conceivable that some Socialist or revolutionary would refrain from committing an act of gallantry and saving a drowning child in a. river because he would certainly earn the commendation of a capitalist who happened to be standing on the bank. But such men cannot be many. Those Labour leaders who have their hearts in the right place, who love their country and who mean to save it for democracy and not to cast it into the jaws of a tyrannical oligarchy, will not be deterred because the onlookers cannot help shouting out their feelings as the struggle goes on.
Previous page
