Читать книгу As It Happened - Clement R. Attlee - Страница 10

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There was in our family a strong tradition of social service. My mother was a district visitor for the Church. My elder brothers had helped at boys’ clubs and an aunt had left home in order to live in a poor street in Wandsworth, over a club for factory girls which she managed. It was in accordance with family practice that I should consider doing something of the sort.

Haileybury College supported a boys’ club in Stepney in the East End of London. It had been started by Lionel Curtis, now the distinguished Fellow of All Souls. I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at the club, and so one October evening in 1905 my brother Laurence and I took a local train from Fenchurch Street Station to Stepney. The club was essentially planned to cater to the needs of boys in a very poor and rough district. Stepney was the home of underemployment and sweated labour. The boys mostly followed blind-alley occupations. Many were van boys. They earned little money, but that little was needed to help keep the family going. By the time they reached eighteen years of age and wanted an adult wage, they were generally thrown out of work, with no training for anything. The club was also a Company of the 1st Cadet Battalion, The Queen’s Regiment, and its membership was drawn from a fairly wide radius.

Few members of the club wore collars and ties and not many had any other than their working clothes. It was one of the advantages of the Cadet Corps that when in uniform these boys could feel smart and take pride in their appearance.

In the residence attached to the club lived three or four men who were engaged in earning their living in professions during the day and worked in the club in the evenings. There were also several men who came to help for one night a week. The club manager was a very fine man—Cecil Nussey, a solicitor—who did great work for the boys’-club movement over many years. He had a perfect sense of justice—a great asset to a club manager.

I became interested in the work and began making the journey from Putney to the club one evening a week. Soon my visits became more frequent, and I took a commission in the Cadets. In 1907 the club manager resigned and Nussey asked me if I would take over the job. I agreed, went to live at Haileybury House, and thus began a fourteen years’ residence in East London.

I had always been painfully shy, and it took me some time to settle down, but East London boys are very friendly. There is no better way to get to know what social conditions are like than in a boys’ club. One learns much more of how people in poor circumstances live through ordinary conversation with them than from studying volumes of statistics.

The practical experience I got in those days of how poor people live was a great help to me in after-years. For example, when I was Prime Minister a senior civil servant was outlining a fuel-rationing scheme and emphasizing the importance of householders storing fuel. I told him that many people had nowhere to store it, adding, “When I lived in East London I kept the coal under the bed. At first I bought too big a sack.”

I soon began to learn many things which had hitherto been unrevealed. I found there was a different social code. Thrift, so dear to the middle classes, was not esteemed so highly as generosity. The Christian virtue of charity was practised, not merely preached. I recall a boy who lived in two rooms with his widowed mother. He earned seven shillings and sixpence a week. A neighbouring family, where there was no income coming in, were thrown out on the street by the landlord. The boy and his mother took them all into their own little home.

I remember taking the club’s football team by local train to play an “away” match. Young Ben had come straight from work with his week’s money—a half-sovereign—and somehow he had lost the gold coin. There was no hesitation amongst the boys. Jack said, “Look, a tanner each all round will make ’alf of it.” They readily agreed, yet probably that tanner was all that most of them would have retained for themselves from their wages.

I found abundant instances of kindness and much quiet heroism in these mean streets. These people were not poor through their lack of fine qualities. The slums were not filled with the dregs of society. Not only did I have countless lessons in practical economics, but there was kindled in me a warmth and affection for these people that has remained with me all my life.

From this it was only a step to examining the whole basis of our social and economic system. I soon began to realize the curse of casual labour. I got to know what slum landlordism and sweating meant. I understood why the Poor Law was so hated. I learned also why there were rebels.

My brother Tom was an architect and a great reader of Ruskin and Morris. I too admired these great men and began to understand their social gospel. Tom was helping at the Maurice Hostel in the nearby Hoxton district of London. Our reading became more extensive. After looking into many social-reform ideas—such as copartnership—we both came to the conclusion that the economic and ethical basis of society was wrong. We became Socialists. I recall how in October 1907 we went to Clements Inn to try to join the Fabian Society. Edward Pease, the secretary, regarded us as if we were two beetles who had crept under the door, and when we said we wanted to join the society he asked coldly, “Why?” We said humbly that we were Socialists and persuaded him that we were genuine.

I remember very well the first Fabian Society meeting we attended at Essex Hall. The platform seemed to be full of bearded men—Aylmer Maude, William Sanders, Sidney Webb, and Bernard Shaw. I said to my brother, “Have we got to grow a beard to join this show?” A fiery young man with red hair was attacking the Webbs from the Left-Wing point of view. He is now Lord Haden Guest. H. G. Wells was on the platform, speaking in a little piping voice; he was very unimpressive. Other speakers were Chiozza Money, full of statistics; Shaw, confident and deadly in argument; Webb, lucidly explanatory; and Hubert Bland with his eyeglass. They all seemed pretty formidable to a neophyte.

A few weeks later an East End wharf-keeper—a fiery little Welshman, Tommy Williams—came to Haileybury House burning with indignation occasioned by a particularly harsh action by the Charity Organisation Society. During his denunciation, Williams proclaimed his socialist faith, and I, after listening, said, “I am a Socialist too.” He invited me to come on the following Wednesday to join the local branch of the Independent Labour party. This was my first step into political life. The branch I joined was only about a dozen strong, and some of these dared not openly declare their membership for fear of losing their jobs. But we were full of enthusiasm and ran three or four open-air meetings each week at the street corners.

For some years my normal round was four evenings a week in the club and one evening at the I.L.P. branch, while the weekends were partly filled with refereeing for the boys’ football matches and open-air speaking on Sundays. The rest of the weekend I spent at home at Putney.

The club work was interesting. It was astonishing how wide were the interests of the boys in all kinds of subjects. Sometimes they produced very good aphorisms. For instance, we were discussing friendship one evening. One boy summed it up by saying, “A pal is a bloke wot knows all about yer and yet loves yer.” Another time we were discussing the qualities of a gentleman. One said, “A bloke wot does no work.” Another said, “A rich bloke.” Young Dicky, a bright lad, said, “I reckon a gentleman is a bloke wot’s the same to everybody.” It was Dicky, too, who said that women ought to have the vote because “only a working woman knows what a working woman has to go through.” Sometimes views were a bit confused. One boy asked my colleague, “Is God a Jew?”; to which he replied, “Not exactly.” Said another, “Well, his son was anyway”; to which a third retorted, “Garn, his mother was a Roman Catholic.” I have many memories of those days and of the boys whom I knew so well.

Our club was secular though there was a voluntary religious class taken by an old lady—a person of very wide sympathy. There was a good deal of feeling against some of the religious clubs. As one boy said, “They say, ‘Come to our service and we’ll give you a ticket for an entertainment’—garn.” Yet there was a very distinct atmosphere in the club, which expressed itself one day. The boys asked for the use of the club for a meeting among themselves. They formed a league, taking its title from the Haileybury School motto—the Sursum Corda League. Its principles were these:

To endeavour to live a clean and manly life.

To abstain from all bad language.

To help all fellow cadets when in trouble in rightful circumstances.

To endeavour to get the club a good name.

To endeavour to do everything with a good heart.

Sursum Corda.

One boy said that there was really no need for this because everyone knew this was what the club stood for.

We had developed a system whereby the senior boys, who were N.C.O.s, took responsibility. I found that in the next street there was a gang of small barefoot boys of school age who had nowhere to go, and they asked me if I could do something for them. I arranged to open the club from seven to eight o’clock each evening before the senior club opened. Several of the senior boys volunteered to help keep order and instruct in boxing and gymnastics. This meant that senior boys snatched a very hasty meal after a long day’s work before hurrying to the club. They had no easy task either, handling these rough little boys, most of whom were quite handy at throwing stones. But they stuck to their jobs, and it showed, I thought, a good conception of service.

I recall that many years later, after I entered Parliament, I went to speak in a town and stayed with one of my old club boys. He had taken an active share in starting a boys’ club there and wanted others to have the opportunities he had enjoyed.

Haileybury House was a good school of citizenship. Most of the managers of the club of those days are dead—several were killed in the First World War—but I recall them with gratitude for their kindness to me.

The club and Cadet Company still go on. I visited them not very long ago. I noticed one striking change—an immense improvement in physique. Many of our club boys did not get enough food, especially when unemployed, for, as one said to me, “You can’t take the food when you haven’t brought anything in.”

Our Cadet Battalion consisted of companies in various parts of London. The headquarters were in Southwark; another company was at Hackney Wick, run by the Eton Mission. Another was in Westminster. My youngest brother Laurence later took over a company in Islington and went to live there. We had cheery times at Kingston Barracks at Easter and at camps in various seaside places.

Our officers were a delightful lot of men. There was Charles Phillimore, a banker, who used to call me “Keir ’Ardie.” There were Freddie Elliott, Gerard Hillyard (later a K.C.), Claude Hay, who acted as quartermaster, and Harold Bond of our own company. Our colonel was an old regular—Colonel Beresford—who had taken part in Lord Roberts’ march to Kandahar, while Major Bennett was one of the original officers from the start in 1885 and continued to serve until a few years ago. When Prime Minister, I had the pleasure of recommending him for a decoration for his lifelong social service.

I attended an Officers’ School in Bermondsey, where I stayed with Alec Paterson and other friends at the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission. I recall discussing with him his well-known book Across the Bridges.

During these years I continued to attend chambers. I shared a room with a Corpus friend, Bertrand Devas, who was killed in the First World War, but I made little progress, and indeed my heart was not in the job. I applied for various positions but without success. Socialist activities in those days were not looked upon with favour.

In September 1907 I paid my first visit to America. A cousin was married to a parson who was working in a small town in Saskatchewan, and my sister Mary had gone out to help them when the arrival of their first child was expected. I was sent out to escort her home from Montreal. I sailed from Liverpool on an Allan liner. Among the passengers was old General William Booth of the Salvation Army. I distinctly remember his going ashore at Rimouski, crying, “Save your souls, save your souls.” Marconi was on board, and also one of the Allan family with whom, in 1915, I was in hospital at Malta. At that time one of the members of the shipping firm was the representative of Scotland on the National Administrative Council of the Independent Labour party. After an enjoyable trip up the St. Lawrence, I went ashore at Quebec, saw the Plains of Abraham, and eventually landed in Montreal. Finding that my sister would not arrive there for three days, I decided to spend a weekend in the United States, where I visited Boston, saw Harvard University, had a look at New York City, and sailed up the Hudson, meeting my sister at Niagara Falls. This proved to be my last visit to America until the Second World War, when I crossed the Atlantic as a member of the war cabinet.

On my way home I made friends with a Canadian businessman who had big interests in railways and lumber. Twice in later years I was somewhat embarrassed by his referring to me on business matters, stating that he would be prepared to go in for a big deal if I would be willing to vouch for the bona fides of those with whom he was in contact. It showed a remarkable trust in a casual acquaintance.

My father’s health had been failing for the past year and in the autumn of 1908 he died. I had enough money to continue to live at Haileybury House, but I was tired of waiting for work at the Bar and was constantly looking out for some other occupation that would at once be more congenial and bring in some income.