MR. JOHN BURNS.
rTO TUE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sia,—I notice in your panegyric on Mr. Burns in last week's Spectator you do not doubt that "he will obtain the support of the working classes quite as much as of other sections." To those of us who in the past looked to Mr. Burns for leader- ship, and can claim to be more in touch with working-class politics than the editorial staff of the Spectator, this seems unlikely. The Yorkshire miners recently took a poll for the speakers at their gala held at Barnsley this year. Mr. Crooks headed the poll; Mr. Keir Hardie came second; Mr. Philip Snowden was not far off; lango intervallo came Mr. Smillie. Mr. Burns was a hundred votes behind Mr. Smillie, and did not secure a sufficient number of suffrages to include him among the selected speakers; while his henchman, Mr. Maddison, was to be found at the bottom of the poll. The " support " Mr. Burns is likely to get from the Yorkshire Branch of the Miners' Federation appears to be a negligible quantity. The Jarrow victory was largely won on Mr. Curran's indictment of Mr. Burns's administration of the late Government's Unemployed Act. At the Colne Valley election Mr. Burns's policy was under scrutiny again. In view of these recorded opinions of a representative working- class organisation and two typical working-class constituencies, your optimism is hardly justified.—I am, Sir, &O., [Our correspondent makes the usual mistake of identifying the members of Trade-Unions with the working classes. Yet in reality the non-Unionist workers far outnumber those in the trade societies. Those societies have, no doubt, conferred immense benefits on the workers, but they must not be allowed to claim a monopoly of working-class opinion. Still more unfortunate is our correspondent's reference to Jarrow and the Colne Valley. Even if we assume—an impossible assumption—that every man who voted for the winning candidates condemned Mr. Burns, he would only be con- demned by a third of the electorate. The present repre- sentatives of those constituencies were, it must be remembered, returned by relatively small minorities.—En. Spectator.]
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