Liberal Unionists

“ Should it come to pass that the two great American political parties oppose labor legislation as they now favor it, it would be the imperative duty of unionists to form a third party to secure some measure of reform. ”

“ History shows that even men who are appointed to the upper house as Liberals become adherents almost invariably, in time, of Unionism. The consequence is that, while a Unionist administration is certain to have the support of a working majority in both of the houses, a Liberal government cannot expect ever to find itself in the ascendancy in the Lords. ”

“ Flushed with confidence at the sight of their serried phalanxes and extending lines, the unionists do like most people invested with unwonted power; they aim at more than is possible or just. They fancy that they can put the screw on the community, almost without limit. But they will soon find out their mistake. They will learn it from those very things which are filling the world with alarm—the extension of unionism, and the multiplication of strikes. ”

“ The main thing is that in every such struggle the workers shall be united, shall in fact be unionists and no more be guilty of scabbing on their party than on their union, no more think of voting a capitalist ticket on election day and turning the working class over to capitalist robbery and misrule than they would think of voting in the union to turn it over to the capitalists and have it run in the interest of the capitalist class. ”

“ The leading Socialist monthly in America, the International Socialist Review, which has indorsed the new unionism, has even found it necessary recently to remind its readers that the Socialist Party does after all play a certain rôle and a more or less important one, in the revolutionary movement. "Representative revolutionary unionists, like Lagardelle of France and Tom Mann of Australia," said the Review, "point out the immense value of a political party as an auxiliary to the unions. A revolutionary union without the backing of a revolutionary party will be tied up by injunctions. ”

“ Among labor leaders the struggle centred largely about the control of the Trade Union Congress; in the world at large, the efforts of the new unionists were characterized by the attempt to organize the unskilled workers of the cities, with the ultimate object of forming a large party in favor of municipal ownership, and later of introducing municipal socialism. ”

“ The unions, that is, are helping most effectively to accomplish the task, traditionally attributed to the American democratic political system—the task of raising the general standard of living; and the unionists claim that they deserve on this ground recognition by the state and active encouragement. Obviously, however, such encouragement could not go very far without violating both the Federal and many state constitutions—the result being that there is a profound antagonism between our existing political system and what the unionists consider to be a perfectly fair demand. ”

“ Strong, that ideas spring up with nothing behind them? All those who are acquainted with the history of unionism know that 'close unionism,' the refusal to work with non-unionists, arose from the persistent preference given by employers to non-unionists, which was a victimising of unionists. ”

“ Many Socialists, however, look upon the unions primarily as an economic means, more or less important, of advancing political Socialism—while many unionists regard the Socialist parties primarily as political instruments for furthering the economic action of the unions. ”

“ Hitherto a mild and harmless Liberal, with no relish for the methods of some of his leaders, and not apt to go out of his way to look for political excitement, he suddenly developed into a Liberal Unionist of the deepest dye. ”

“ However, many of the demands of our unions are political in character and a trade union must also work on the political field to win them. The C.I.O., profiting by all the past experiences of labor, does not attempt either to be a political party itself or to ignore the great importance of political action and the decisive power that trade unionists, as voting citizens can exercise. It is apparent that the economic and political interests of labor are intertwined and inseparable, we need both economic organizations and a political party interrelated but not identical. ”

“ To what extent they are destined, in their character of constituent members of the Labour Party, sometimes actually combined with Local Labour Parties (in the latter cases with the inclusion, since 1918, of a section of individual members, Trade Unionists or others, “workers by hand or by brain”) , to develop an effective political organisation, drawing together the whole of the supporters of the Labour Party in each Parliamentary constituency, remains yet to be demonstrated. ”

“ Their very loyalty becomes treason, and the working class they seek to serve is warned against them, while the false leaders are loaded with fulsome adulation.
But, nevertheless, the clear voice of the awakened and dauntless few cannot be silenced. The new unionism is being heard. In trumpet tones it rings out its revolutionary shibboleth to all the workers of the earth: Our interests are identical—let us combine, industrially and politically, assert our united power, achieve our freedom, enjoy the fruit of our labor, rid society of parasitism, abolish poverty, and civilize the world! ”

“ The running of independent Labour candidates against both parties alike was a most significant symptom of the new feeling in Labour politics. The Labour Representation League, composed mainly of prominent Trade Unionists, had for some years been endeavouring to secure the election of working men to the House of Commons ”

“ But while the general national well-being seems sufficiently protected for the present against the aggressive assertion of the class interests of the unionists, the legal public interest of particular states and cities cannot be considered as anywhere near so secure; and in any event the existence of aggressive discontent on that part of the unionists must constitute a serious problem for the American legislator and statesman. ”

“ But a Unionist who pretends [285] to be and calls himself a Liberal, and who for seven long years has voted for everything reactionary and entirely opposed to his creed—I have no patience with these men. ”

“ The Unionist policy is a policy of union and strength. The Unionists say: As we are faced by great dangers, {35}let us hold to the tried and proved national organization which was devised to meet such dangers in the past. And they say also: Let us have peace between the classes, for division in that way is even more dangerous than the division of the United Kingdom into its separate tribes or parishes.... We must keep united or we will be destroyed. But the Unionists go farther, and they say: We must be united not only as a United Kingdom but as a British Empire. ”

“ Communist Party, Workers' Party, and Proletarian Party, have been particularly influenced. Made up of elements to whom dual unionism was almost a religion for many years, they have now turned entirely against that policy and are working diligently within the old unions to revive and re-invigorate them. ”

“ The unions as well as their common organizations, the Trade Union Congress, the Labour Party, and the General Federation of Trade Unions are drawing closer together, while the Socialists and revolutionary unionists are everywhere taking the lead—as evidenced, for example, by the election of the most radical Socialist member of Parliament, Mr. ”

“ If, for example, national Federation officials were elected, instructed, and recalled by a vote of all the unionists in the country, the latter would probably be willing to place in the hands of such an executive power to call out the unions in strike in such combinations as would make the resistance of employers most difficult, and power to control national strike funds collected from all the unions for these contests. ”

“ The reactionists, with their champion, Andrew Johnson, also offer you a Union; a Union based upon deception unscrupulously practiced, upon great promises treacherously violated, upon the National faith scandalously broken; a Union whose entrails are once more to be lacerated by the irrepressible struggle between slavery and liberty; a Union in a part of which the rules of speech will be proscribed by the terrorism of the mob, and free thought silenced by the policeman's club and the knife of the assassin ”

“ The painful spectacle of unions going down to defeat before the onslaughts of combined capital, while allied unions stand by with seeming indifference and give their fallen brothers no helping hand, will be a thing of the past, Such preposterous unionism will be buried so deep it will never be revived except in scornful memory. It will then be difficult to imagine that the workers ever had such short-visioned, narrow-minded, self-centered unionism, as our present system. ”

“ Industrial Unionism bids all workers rally to its standard. To all sons and daughters of toil who yearn for a better day we appeal for Solidarity.
Let a sordid crowd of kept men and women imbued with sordid ideals oppose this new redeeming movement of labor—it is bound to succeed in spite of all opposition, whether it be that which show its hideous form in the uniform of the hired and armed Hessians with rifle in hand, or it intrigues and conjures under the cloak of Law, Authority, Order, Religion, et al., or even under the greasy smile and brass face of the "labor leader." ”

“ To resist such a proposal as that is not fighting for a party; it is not fighting for a class. It is fighting for the stability of society, for the fundamental rights of the whole nation.
I say, then, that on the negative side, in the things it is called upon to resist, the Unionist party is strong and fortunate. But are we to be content with that? Should we not all like to feel that we appealed for the confidence of the people on the merits of our own policy, and not merely on the demerits of our opponents? ”

“ Now, they, like you, are looking out for their jobs. It is perhaps too much to expect them to discharge themselves. It is to their personal interest to keep the workers of the country divided into a thousand different organizations, so that a thousand different sets of officials will be required; so that a thousand sets of officials may draw salary from the scant wages of the working class. You may be told that the reason I am in favor of a new union is that I am a discredited labor leader and that I am trying to create a new job for myself. ”

“ That after the workers achieve unity in a Federal Union the capitalists take charge of it and divide it up to suit their own interests. You, as a worker, would desire such a union as is implied in the Federal Labor Union—all workers in one union. An employing group, or even an individual employer, would want them divided up, and bound by rules and agreements, so that they could not act together. The Federal Union and what becomes of it demonstrates the difference between a working class conception of a union and a capitalist conception. ”

“ Now there are strong unions and weak unions—both arrayed against a capital better organized and stronger than ever before in the world's history. Unionism is primary instruction in revolution. We must teach labor its power, and it is slow to learn. We must prepare, prepare, prepare, and when all is ready we shall rise. Not one union, not the unions of a state, of a country, but the unions of the world...hundreds of millions of men who have been ground down by aristocracies and wealth for generations. ”

“ Every new movement, be it religious, political or economic, has its birth like a volcano, and unionism was no exception to this rule. The labor unions at first had their violent agitators who, possessing greater physical than mental calibre, laid the crude foundation of a [42] force in an arbitrary manner that consequently had its gradual evolution of development. ”

“ If, for instance, the unions' members were to realize the capitalist nature of the system, and would deprive the system managers of control, these members, cognizant of organization value, might consolidate their forces into a single union with disastrous consequences to the capitalist control of society. ”

“ The Empire, as conceived by modern Imperialists, is in fact the negation of Liberalism. Domestic liberty, local independence, economic freedom, the development of inferior races, all must be sacrificed to the idea of an isolated and mechanically efficient unity. "The Unionist policy is a policy of union and strength. ”

“ Most capitalists heartily approve the old form of trade unionism and encourage and liberally support it, for the very reason that this outgrown unionism does not truly represent and cannot actually express the economic interests of the working class. ”

“ Long since, and after years of study and experience, I became convinced that the old unions were not fit to cope successfully with the enemy of the working class, and that a new organization was an imperative necessity. ”

“ That is to say, he will understand that when the workers are united in one great economic organization and one great political organization; when they strike together and vote together, they can put their class in power in every council, in every legislature and in the national congress; they can abolish the capitalist system, take over the industries to themselves, and rule the land forevermore. ”