Читать книгу As It Happened - Clement R. Attlee - Страница 12

Table of Contents

In 1909 the famous Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law was published. The commission, which took over four years to issue its report, could not agree either on principles or remedies. The minority report, to which George Lansbury, Bishop Wakefield, and Francis Chandler were cosignatories with Mrs. Sidney Webb, was a remarkable document challenging the whole conception of public relief of distress, which was still, theoretically at least, based on the principles of the 1834 Poor Law. It expressed a socialist philosophy. The majority report, on the other hand, was inspired by the Charity Organisation Society, the coordinating body of a number of voluntary societies, and one to which I was soon to be violently opposed locally.

The Webbs decided to open a campaign for popularizing the proposals of the minority report and gathered round them a number of young Fabians, notably the late C. M. Lloyd and A. Colegate, now the Conservative Member of Parliament for Burton. I ceased to practise at the Bar and became the campaign’s lecture secretary.

My task was to offer lectures to various societies and then to find suitable lecturers to meet these engagements. We had a fine list of speakers, mainly drawn from the Labour movement, but we had support from adherents of both the Liberal and Conservative parties. Robert Harcourt and Sir Gilbert Parker were active in the House of Commons for their respective parties, and an amusing incident arose out of this. It occurred while I was speaking at Gravesend for the Independent Labour party, where our speakers were usually given a rough time by the local Conservative supporters. Anticipating this, I spoke at length on the minority report amid much interruption and booing. When at the end of my speech I said, “I gather that you Conservatives object strongly to these proposals,” there was a great shout of “Yes.” “Then,” I said, “you had better take it up with your local Member, Sir Gilbert Parker, who is a strong supporter of them.” The vociferous Conservatives retired to their club in some embarrassment.

A difficulty in my work was that almost all societies wanted our “star” lecturers. Sometimes these broke their engagements, and I often had to act as substitute at short notice. I recall addressing a very large gathering of Liberal women in Bolton, attracted by the name of Bishop Wakefield, on “Problems of Birth and Infancy,” with which, as a bachelor, my acquaintance was purely theoretical. The rough and tumble of street-corner speaking had taken away the shyness with which I had been afflicted.

The campaign was great fun and had a big effect in the country, but the Liberal government refused to do anything. John Burns, a Liberal M.P. and president of the Local Government Board, was completely in the hands of his reactionary colleagues on the board; while Lloyd George was engaged in developing his insurance plans. We were all sanguine that in a few years the old Poor Law would pass away, but the struggle took longer than we imagined and it was not until nearly forty years had elapsed that the last vestiges of it were removed from the statute book by the Labour government of which I was Prime Minister.

In 1910 I was offered and accepted the secretaryship of Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel, one of the first social and educational settlements in East London, and went into residence there. My new work brought me into contact with a great variety of social-reform activities, but, although kept very busy, I still attended the Haileybury House Club whenever possible and worked for the I.L.P.

I had been made a school manager some time before and I was a very active member of a School Care Committee. I had also done some investigation work in preparation for the Trade Boards Act in association with J. J. Mallon, whose work in drawing attention to the dreadful conditions in sweated industries—particularly by arranging an exhibition in London—had been instrumental in getting the act passed in 1909. As a result of this act, boards were established covering a number of industries and consisting of representatives of workers and employers and nominated members. They investigated industrial conditions, and amongst their powers was that of fixing minimum rates of wages. Tailoring was one of the industries covered by the act, and I visited “outworkers” in the tailoring trade, of whom a great number lived in Stepney. The conditions of these people who toiled for long hours in their own homes were appalling. I remember seeing two women who worked at trouser finishing. They were paid a penny-farthing a pair, out of which they had to buy their own thread. Their weekly wage amounted to about five shillings.

After the act had been passed, elections were held for the workers’ representatives on the board for the tailoring trade. There were in East London four rival Jewish organizations, and I was asked to take the chair at a joint meeting. After I had opened the meeting the proceedings were conducted almost entirely in Yiddish, a language quite unknown to me, though old Lewis Lyons, a veteran trade unionist, tried to translate at intervals. Frequently several people were speaking at once amid great uproar. One man in a top hat and a long black coat and a beard leaped onto the platform, shouting and waving an umbrella. I shoved him off and carried on. Eventually, when the clamour was at its height, I closed the meeting and found, somewhat to my surprise, that it had been a complete success and that the representatives had been nominated satisfactorily.

I made many good friends at Toynbee Hall—notably Frank Wise, who was then a clerk in the House of Commons—but my affections were not in Whitechapel; they were in Stepney and Limehouse, and I was not sorry to leave Toynbee Hall at the end of the year and return to what I had come to look upon as my own district.

My next work was as an official explainer of the Lloyd George National Insurance Act of 1911. This act, which provided for free medical attendance and treatment and sick benefits to a large number of workers, involved the cooperation of the Friendly Societies, mutual-aid associations which were to become “Approved Societies” for the administration of the act. The government, wisely, I think, enrolled a number of people to tour the country to explain the provisions and how the act would work in practice. Lloyd George had got together an exceptionally able team of civil servants, notably Sir Robert Morant, Lord Schuster, and Sir John Anderson, together with a number of younger men, two of whom, Sir John Brooke and Frank Wise, were personal friends of mine. After instruction, we “temporaries” gave lectures on approval and were then despatched around the country. Among other assignments, I toured the counties of Somerset and Essex, of which I acquired considerable knowledge.

I admired the public spirit of the county notables, mostly Tories, who had been bitterly opposed to the act but were most cooperative once it had become law in helping the work of information. I recall speaking to an assemblage in a country vicarage to which I had bicycled over the hills on a hot day. I heard the local vicar say, “I suspect that young man is a Socialist. He wears a soft collar.”

On another occasion when I was staying with a local magnate, his daughter said, “I suppose you are a keen supporter of Lloyd George and the Liberals,” to which I replied, “Good Lord, no.” She said, “Then you are a Conservative.” I said, “Oh no.” “Then what are you?” she asked. When I said, “A Socialist,” there was a distinct sensation.

I remember speaking at Woodford in what is now Churchill’s constituency. A number of young Conservatives sat in front and booed loudly whilst I talked. I told them that I was only an “official explainer,” but they continued to boo. I then said, “You don’t like Lloyd George?” “No,” they yelled. “You don’t like Churchill?” “No,” again. “Then when next you see a sailor you’d better hit him, because Churchill is First Lord of the Admiralty.” That quieted them.

Several of my colleagues in this campaign became regular members of the Civil Service. I daresay I might have done the same, and some of my family, I think, hoped that I might now get a settled job, but I was not prepared to sacrifice my freedom and to give up propaganda work for socialism. In the last stage of the campaign I was posted in the London office to answer inquiries. Shortly afterwards I was out of work again.

Meanwhile my brother Tom, who helped at the Maurice Hostel in Hoxton and was active in the Wandsworth Independent Labour party, was still living in Putney. He had become interested in the work of the Wandsworth Labour Exchange and its service to young people. He also became interested in the secretary, Miss Kathleen Medley, who was a Labour member of the Poplar Borough Council and an equally enthusiastic social worker.

My brother proposed that he and I should live together in Limehouse. We took a London County Council flat in Brightlingsea Buildings, Narrow Street. We did our own cooking and so on, though neighbours were always helpful over such matters as washing and mending socks. During this year I was—to use the admirable phrase coined by Sir William Beveridge—“a man of discontinuous employment.” I did a large amount of unpaid work and a lot of speaking for the Independent Labour party and in the Poor Law campaign. I gave a course of lectures on trade unionism once a week at Ruskin College, Oxford, which had been founded some years earlier to provide a liberal education for workers in a residential college. Except for a few lectures for which I received payment, I had little remunerative employment.

One day my brother came into our flat and announced his engagement to Miss Medley. This broke up our establishment, and I returned to Haileybury House. There was a great wedding in Poplar Parish Church. A rather Conservative relative found herself in a carriage with Will Crooks, then an East End Labour Member of Parliament and tireless agitator for improved social conditions.

In 1912, largely through the influence of Sidney Webb, I was appointed a lecturer and tutor at the London School of Economics in the Department of Social Science and Public Administration. I was not appointed on the score of academic qualification but because I was considered to have a good practical knowledge of social conditions. The school was then comparatively small but had many distinguished teachers, such as Professor Edwin Cannan, Graham Wallas, and Lionel Hobhouse. My immediate chief was Professor Urwick, a very delightful man, and my work, apart from giving lectures on local government and other social subjects, was tutoring students—mostly women—who were about to engage in some branch of social work. The salary was small but sufficient for my wants, while the hours left me plenty of time for social work and also for socialist propaganda, for it was a fundamental rule of the school that no one could be restricted in venting his political opinions.

At this time I became a very active member of a School Care Committee for Trafalgar Square School, a very large school in a poor district. There was much detailed investigation of cases, involving house-to-house visiting in connection with school meals. Public opinion had forced the Conservative London County Council to provide meals, but they did the work very grudgingly. As a result, the supervising of meals was left to voluntary workers, and I frequently supervised the meals of over four hundred children of various ages. To do this, I organized a kind of prefect system, which worked well. Naturally I had many friends among the children. I recall walking along the street one day when a little barefoot girl came and joined me. She said, “Where are you going, Mr. Attlee?” I said, “I’m going home for tea.” “Oh,” she said, “I’m going home to see if there is any tea.” This seemed to me to put very neatly the difference between the comfortable and the insecure classes.

In the local association of Care Committees we used to have great fights against the adherents of the Charity Organisation Society, who believed in the Poor Law principle of deterrence. I recall a parson who advocated giving children only burned porridge served at the most inconvenient place and time. However, Christians of a different mind and Jews combined to defeat the reactionaries.

I recall many incidents of those years. There was the famous siege of the anarchists in Sidney Street in the East End of London in 1911 when Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, took command of the situation and guardsmen opened fire on the murderers, who had barricaded themselves in a house. I had the headmaster of Haileybury, Dr. Wynne Willson (afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells), staying with me. I was taking him for a walk to show him something of the district when I met one of our club boys who said, “I can’t get to work—they’re shooting like anything down the street.” I said, “Let’s go and see,” and we went and viewed the scene. I certainly showed Dr. Willson more of East London life than he had expected.

I remember two great strikes—that of the dockers in London in 1911 and that of the Irish transport and general workers led by Jim Larkin in Dublin two years later. In the former, our branch of the I.L.P. was active in serving meals to dockers’ children, and I remember cutting up many loaves of bread. During the strike in Ireland I recall long hours spent collecting funds at the bottom of Petticoat Lane and admiring the generosity of the passers-by, particularly of a heavyweight boxer who emptied his pockets to the tune of several half-crowns.

All this time I was active in the Socialist movement, doing a great deal of weekend speaking in all parts of the country besides the regular work in our own branch. I was twice runner-up for the representation of London on the National Administrative Committee of the Independent Labour party. At this time we had an accession of strength in the adherence of Dr. Harry Roberts, a well-known doctor in Mile End Road. He started the Stepney Labour League, which was in its way an anticipation of the present local Labour party. He was a bit of an individualist and not easy to work with, but his influence in the district was considerable.

I also did some work for my own union—the National Union of Clerks—and for the London Carmen’s Trade Union. Together with Sam March and Will Godfrey, officials of the Carmen’s Union, I spoke from the back of a cart in Mile End Road. There were many May Day demonstrations in which I joined, and I know what it is to carry a banner from Mile End Waste across Central London to Hyde Park.

I recall many international meetings. I remember hearing Jean Jaurès, the French Socialist leader, speak, and seeing Anatole France kiss Bernard Shaw at a meeting in London. My work had become known to some of our leaders and, in consequence, I was invited to a number of dinners and receptions—among them, one to the South African deportees and another to Andrew Fisher, the Australian Labour Prime Minister.

On several occasions I visited the Continent, walking in Normandy and visiting other parts of France and Belgium. There was a memorable tour of Italy with Tom, Margaret, and a brother and sister of my future wife, when we visited Tuscany, Milan, and the Italian lakes. One year my brother, together with his wife and myself, ran a cooperative holiday for the Poplar Labour League at Wimereux in France, during which I officiated as assistant cook.

Looking back on those days, one is inclined to think of them as quiet and peaceful compared to the present time, but they were, in fact, filled with controversy. There was the struggle with the House of Lords and the Home Rule for Ireland controversy. There were serious industrial disputes and times of international tension. There was the suffragette agitation, and I assisted the constitutional side of the movement of votes for women. Many of the suffrage agitators were drawn from the ranks of the Independent Labour party and were old friends of mine, such as Mrs. Despard and Mrs. Cobden Sanderson. I served on a local committee with Miss Scott, the head of the Ratcliff Settlement, the finest social worker that I have ever known. It will be seen that during these years from 1907 to 1914 I served my apprenticeship in the Labour and Socialist movement and in social work; I was a rank-and-file member with no special ambitions.

It is no part of my purpose in this book to relate the story of the Labour movement, but it is, I think, desirable to say something of what was the situation of the Socialist movement when I joined. The Labour party had shared in the great victory of the 1906 General Election, when the Liberals for the last time achieved power. For the first time there was a Labour party—not merely a Labour group of Members—in the House of Commons. It was only twenty-nine strong, but there was also a group of trade unionists—scarcely less numerous—which was an integral part of the Liberal party. The Labour Members of Parliament were by no means all Socialists. Socialist propaganda had had a big share in leading to the creation of the Labour party, but probably the Taff Vale judgment had had as much effect in causing trade unionists to vote Labour in that election. By this House of Lords judgment a railway union had to pay heavy damages to the Taff Vale Railway Company as damages for loss sustained during a strike. The effect of this was to make big strikes nearly impossible, and the Labour party stood for complete reversal of the judgment.

But the fighting core of the party was the I.L.P., whose leader, Keir Hardie, was now reinforced in the House of Commons by Ramsay MacDonald, Philip Snowden, J. R. Clynes, and others. Without the I.L.P. this attempt to form a new party might have failed, as had happened before. The I.L.P. was a remarkable organization that enlisted the devotion of thousands of men and women. It was not rigidly dogmatic. It was inclusive rather than exclusive, and it preached a socialism that owed far more to the Bible than to Karl Marx. It was indeed a characteristically British interpretation of socialism, a way of life rather than an economic dogma. The I.L.P. had set itself to convert the trade unions to socialism. The Labour Representation Committee, which was formed in 1900 as a federation of trade unions and Socialist societies, of which the most important was the I.L.P., and from which the Labour party grew, had the simple object of getting Labour representatives into Parliament. As Keir Hardie foresaw, a party formed on this basis was bound in time to become socialist.

As a contrast, the Social Democratic Federation was completely Marxist and preached the class war. Its outlook was more materialist than the I.L.P.’s. Although the S.D.F. took part in the inaugural meeting of the Labour Representation Committee, it subsequently withdrew and maintained an uncompromisingly independent attitude. It was led by the veteran Hyndman, who was a good deal of an egoist. In its membership were two separate strands, which time and events were to disentangle. At the end of the First World War the S.D.F. split into sections, one of which joined the Labour party, while the other, the ultra-Marxists, became the nucleus of the Communist party.

The Fabian Society was open to all Socialists and included members of the Social Democratic Federation, the Independent Labour party, and Liberals. Indeed, at this time the Fabians were by no means committed to the Labour party. As I have said, there were still many trade unionists in the Liberal party. Most of the miners’ M.P.s were still Liberal-Labour.

These divisions in the ranks of Labour were very real in London. John Burns and Will Steadman were Liberals. Will Crooks was a Fabian, George Lansbury belonged to the Independent Labour party, while Will Thorne was a member of the Social Democratic Federation. The Independent Labour party and the Social Democratic Federation were fairly equally matched in London, but there was an unholy alliance on the London Trades Council between the S.D.F. and Liberal-Labour against the I.L.P. At that time the Labour and Socialist movement was weak in London. There were only two Labour Members of Parliament in the county—Charles Bowerman of Deptford and Will Crooks of Woolwich, while Will Thorne held Southwest Ham. Outside Woolwich and Poplar there were few Labour councillors. Indeed, in those days they were very important people, and we knew most of them by name.

In the Socialist movement one soon got to know all the more active spirits in the London area. This position of being a small fighting minority gave one a certain sense of exaltation. The capitalist fortress looked very strong and formidable, and our forces were weak. We were crusaders in enemy-occupied territory. It followed also that we had a fellow feeling for other minorities; holders of unpopular opinions tended to stand together.

Our Stepney branch of the I.L.P. met weekly in a small dingy church hall, but we ran at least two and sometimes three or four open-air meetings a week. I was early pressed to speak and made my first attempt under a flickering gas-light at the bottom of Barnes Street, speaking in a loud voice to call the crowd. It is not easy to speak to an empty street in order to try to attract the passers-by, but I did a lot of it in those days. The people I admired were those who did the tedious jobs, collecting our exiguous subscriptions, trying to sell literature, and carrying the improvised platform from one street corner to another. They got no glamour. They did not expect to live to see victory but, uncomplainingly, they worked to try to help on the cause.

As time went on I began to take speaking engagements for other London branches; indeed, there were few recognized street corners that I did not attend. There was a wonderful comradeship in those days. We were mostly wage earners. Middle-class people were not many in the East London movement. The late C. M. Lloyd in Bethnal Green and R. C. K. Ensor in Poplar were the most prominent. Both were distinguished scholars from Oxford and had much influence in our East London movement. A year or two later we had two notable recruits—Susan Lawrence from the Conservatives and Dr. Salter from the Liberals. It was uphill work and our branch grew slowly.

Another comrade and I used to visit the various trade-union branches to try to interest them in the political movements. These met mostly in public houses, and I got to know the members quite well, but the response to our appeals was not great. In 1908 I became secretary of our I.L.P. branch and was a delegate to the Annual Conference at Edinburgh. This was the conference at which Hardie, Snowden, MacDonald, and Glasier resigned from the Administrative Council, owing to an adverse vote on the question of the treatment of Victor Grayson. This was the only time I saw this curious character. He won a sensational by-election in Colne Valley as an unofficial candidate and made a rather theatrical display in Parliament. After his defeat he faded out and disappeared from public view, though rumours of his having been seen used to circulate from time to time. He was a fine mob orator but a man of unstable character.

In East London our great leaders were Lansbury and Crooks. Crooks’s great fight on the Poplar Board of Guardians^[1] was a striking episode in the battle against the Poor Law. He was a fine character, a real East Londoner, a master of humour and pathos. His Sunday speeches at the dock gates were a notable feature of East End life. Of Lansbury I shall have much to say later. I was to meet many of the propagandists of those days later on in the House of Commons. Some were to serve under me in government, half a dozen were to go to the House of Lords on my recommendation, but little did we anticipate such a future in those days. Other good friends, like Harry Orbell and Bill Devenay of the Dockers, and Jack Scurr of the Social Democratic Federation, have passed on.

The various strains in the movement found their echo in our branch meetings, and we used to discuss vehemently such topics as the advantages of revolutionary or reformist tactics and the question of industrial, as opposed to political, action. I am sure that a substantial apprenticeship in the ordinary work of a local branch is of great value to anyone destined to play any part in political life, especially if he is to become prominent in a national sphere. Not that I had any anticipation of future prominence in those days. I had no idea of anything more than working as a member of the rank and file and perhaps getting onto a local council.

Twice in those days I was a candidate for the Stepney Borough Council and twice for the Limehouse Board of Guardians, but without success. It will be realized that the franchise then was far more restricted than it is today. These were propaganda fights, and to get a hundred votes in a local contest was regarded as a moral victory. We made various efforts to increase our effectiveness. In conjunction with the local S.D.F. we started a weekly paper called The Stepney Worker, but after three numbers the Whitechapel S.D.F., who were dyed-in-the-wool Marxists, found some deviation, withdrew their support, and the venture failed.

We tried to run rather ambitious premises and a club, but our money soon gave out. We attempted several times to form a Trades Council, but the more skilled trade-union branches were located outside our borough and the others were apathetic. Apathy—how the word recalls one of the best of our comrades, George Cressall. How often he deplored the apathy of the workers! In 1951 his widow, our first lady member in the movement, made a speech at the Annual Conference of the Labour party that roused the delegates to great enthusiasm. As I listened to Mrs. Nellie Cressall I felt very proud of my old friend and comrade of Stepney days. There are not many of the old lot left now.

Many interesting characters were members of our branch from time to time. I have already mentioned Tommy Williams, the wharf-keeper. He was a vehement temperance reformer, and no wonder, for he had been brought up by a drunken father. Once Tommy was launched in a speech he took a lot of stopping, despite the fact that a visiting speaker might be waiting his turn. There was Joe Pert, a sardonic riverside worker, with his invariable formula, “As fur as that there goes,” often followed by, “There ain’t no manner of sense in it absolutely.” There was a most devoted worker, Kinchin, who for years was responsible for carrying the platform from corner to corner. Quite a character was Jack Edwards, a Corporation dustman. He was a great lover of words. He would select one from the dictionary and use it for several weeks. Once it was “adamant”; he pronounced it “adamnant,” which made it more impressive. While he was “adamnant” he opposed practically everything. Finally he “took umbrage” for several weeks, a phrase that suited his personality, and we had a gloomy time. Bill Painter was another character, a woodworker, always on the Left Wing. We used to have great theological discussions at his house. Yes, the old Stepney branch of the I.L.P. was indeed a good comradeship.

So the years passed until August 1914, when fortune once more changed the current of my life. I was on holiday in Seaton in Devon with Tom and his wife when the First World War broke out.

[1]	Each borough had its Board of Guardians to administer the Poor Law under the supervision of the Central government. The Law as such was superseded by the National Assistance Act of 1948.—Ed.