Mr. Snowden and the Independent Labour Party
THE hen which has hatched out ducks' eggs has a bewildering moment when her brood swim off upon the pond beyond her reach and indifferent to her complaints. She is a rightful object of sympathy ; and so is any parent who suffers a similar shock. The Independent Labour Party has been suffering thus through several years.- It is the parent of the Labour Party, and now that the Labour Party has grown vastly, and the I.L.P.'s strength is diminished, the older party runs round the pond of politics uttering piercing lamentations.
But nobody- can say of it that it is guilty of mere futile despondency. It plays an extraordinarily active part in inventing programmes and in forcing them upon the Labour Party: • The I.L.P. will not have to blame itself if- ever it is left out in the cold, for it aspires to be the chief source of original and fertilizing Socialistic ideas.
Mr. Snowden's resignation last week from the I.L.P., which he has served faithfully for thirty-four years, marks a complete upset of the balarice which was held for a time between the Labour Party and the I.L.P. It is not certain yet whether the I.L.P. will be able to attract enough followers to cause a visible split in the Labour Party, or whether it will go on just abusing and trying to " ginger up " the tame Parliamentary leaders of Labour without actually causing a split. It is, at all events, remarkable that both Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Mr. Snowden have been smothered lately with acid if not venomous criticism by the New Leader, the organ - of the I.L.P. Mr; MacDonald has not gone to the length of resigning from the I.L.P., but he has been -courageous enough to say that the I.L.P. is trying to • lead Labour " straight to destruction." He has warned it plainly that there is no sense in . trying to make a camping place for. Labour " half-way between Socialism and Communism." He cannot discover any quality -of practicality or- wisdom in the I.L.P.'s policy of " Socialism - in our time." He is, of course, like Mr.
Snowden, an -unshaken believer in what Mr: Sidney Webb has called the inevitability of gradualneSs. He is a pure evolutionist, ardently wishing, no doubt, that the evolutionary process were quicker, but insisting all the saute on the necessity of patience and on the desirability 9f accepting contributions to the process . even though they come from political enemies.
• Although the I.L.P. foresaw that Mr. Snowden would not - continue his membership of the party much longer, and although its sour comment on his resignation is that he has resigned none -too soon, no one need doubt that it was painful for him to cut such an old association.
The Independent Labour Party was founded in -1893, and when Mr. Snowden writes of the " joyful comrade- ship " in the early years of the party's propaganda, he certainly means what he says. All men and women who club together to advance a cause and to make sacrifices for it know what such comradeship means. Whether the cause is wise or unwise, it is enough that they believe in it—enough that they devote to it all their strength and brains and perhaps their possessions. Whole- heartedness gives ..dignity to almost any cause, and a man must have lived on the plains and not on. the heights of life if he has never felt such exaltation. Mr. Snowden has been chairman of the I.L.P. no fewer than six times. He has long felt, however, that when the Labour Party had been created, the I.L.P. had run its -course. He has said that members of the Labour Party all over the country cannot understand why the LL.P. still goes on either overlapping or competing with the larger comprehensive party. The LL.P., of course, does not agree with that. It says, in effect, that the Labour PartY, led by such men as Mi. MacDonald and Mr. Snowden, would do nothing if it was not kept up to the mark. Therefore the I:L.P., in pursuit of its object, " Socialism in our time," has tried to promote into a test -question the doctrine of a living wage guaranteed by the State, has laid emphasis on the nationaliiation of the whole banking kysteM of the country, and has transformed the Minority Report of the Colwyn Committee into the much more aggressive policy of the Surtax. The Minority Report laid it down that the revenue from a Surtax must be applied solely to the reduction of debt, but the I.L.P. assigned the revenue to new social services and only in a minor degree to the reduction of debt. And it actually prevailed upon the Labour Party to adopt this policy Poor Mr. MacDonald is in a quandary. - He was less bold than Mr. Snowden, and at first he accepted the LL.P.'s ideas of the Surtax almost entirely. Since then he has mentioned reservations, but he his never gone so far as Afr Snowden in declaring that it is all wrong for a party to map out a Budget in advance. The acceptance by the Labour Party of the I.L.P; version of the Surtax- was no dOubt a very formidable fact, yet if Mr: MacDonald cannot resist formidable'. facts he will find when Labour is again in office that the Government are bound hand and foot by a series of Labour resolutions. If he does not struggle out of the bonds now he will not be a free man nor even a good democrat if ever he should be Prime Minister again.
Mr. Wheatley says that Mr. Snowden is no longer a. Socialist, but careful onlookers will say that it is the I.L.P. that- has changed, not Mr. Snowden. Mr. Snowden's ease is that the I.L.P. has done what it set out to do. First it created the Labour Party,- and secondly, when Labour formed a Government; it contri- buted- almost all the Ministers. -That surely gives the verdict to Mr. Snowden. - The truth is that those who have held the higher offices of Government, and expect to hold them again, have had a sobering lesson in responsibility. They have recog- nized at close quarters the difference between pious resolutions, such as Socialistic societies pour out from their printing presses; and the policieS which those who are trustees of the safety and prosperity of the country can honestly put into operation. All this is a truism, but it is a very important one. Even if a -split in the Labour Party should not come now—and personally we do not expect one soon—it is sure to come later. No Labour Government with a proper sense of caution will ever satisfy the extremists. The extremists will then break away, and the Labour moderates will accept the help of other parties in securing public safety. The net result may be that the country will have moved further towards its destiny, whatever that may be, but it will not have moved quite so far or so fast as alarmists fear.
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