The ratepayers, awakened at last from their apathy by the
enormous increase in the rates, went in large numbers to the municipal polls on Monday and administered a salutary check to the spendthrifts. The Labour l'arty, which had made greater efforts than ever to dominate the town councils, was routed. In the seventy-one leading boroughs, according to the Times, the Labour Party nominated 747 candidates, but returned only 199. At Liverpool, Portsmouth, Stockport, Huddersfield, Bradford and several other towns all the Labour candidates were rejected. At Birmingham only two out of twenty-three Labour candidates were successful ; at Blackburn only one out of fourteen, and at Northampton only one out of twelve, were returned. In Glasgow, however, the Labour Party gained twenty seats on the Town Council. But they owed their success largely to the Irish Roman Catholics, who swarm in the Glasgow slums and contribute largely to the criminal element in the city. Four avowed revolutionaries and a Simi Feiner were rejecter% but thirteen out of the forty-four Labour councillors are Irish.
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