Unionist Party

“ Men of first-rate ability and character are rare. Still rarer are men who, having those qualities, also have the knack of compelling the attention and respect even of a hostile House of Commons. When a party possesses a leader with all these gifts, it is not likely to change him in a hurry.
But if I refuse to take a gloomy view of the Unionist leadership, I must admit that I am not altogether an optimist about the immediate prospects of Unionism. There is no doubt a bright side to the picture as well as a less encouraging one. ”

“ New Unionist " party of young men, who vigorously objected to the degradation of a Trade Union into a mutual insurance company, who protested against the exclusion of the lowly paid sections from the organisation of the trade, and who advocated the use of the political influence of the Society in the interests of Social-Democracy. By 1888 the Socialists had not only secured the allegiance of large sections of the unskilled labourers in London and some other towns, but had obtained an important body of recruits in the great " Amalgamated " societies. ”

“ Mr Balfour had never spoken more brilliantly, nor shone more as a debater, than in these years when he had to confront a House of Commons three-fourths of which was hostile. His speech at Birmingham (November 14, 1907) , fully accepting the principles of Mr Chamberlain’s fiscal policy, proved epoch-making in consolidating the Unionist party—except for a small number of free-traders, like Lord Robert Cecil, who continued to hold out—in favour of tariff reform ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A new attempt to induce the unions to enter upon independent political action was made recently by the Labor Party of the United States, subsequently amalgamated with other groups to form the Farmer-Labor Party. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The day had come, the letter went on to say, when "we Unionists, without abating one jot of our Unionism, and Nationalists, without abating one jot of their Nationalism, can each show our faith in the cause for which we have fought so bitterly and so long, by sinking our party differences for our country's good, and leaving our respective policies for the justification of time." ”

“ Better they should go over to the rebels at once, than prevent the extinction of the rebellion through their conditional Unionism.
But it is with Northern out-criers for the Constitution and the Union that the present inquiry is chiefly concerned. These men want the Union 'as it was.' What was it? What was it, in the only thing that is in their thoughts and wishes when they raise the cry? It was a Union controlled by the South through alliance with a Northern party styling itself Democratic. ”

“ We could all wish for some time to come—perhaps forever—to see only a single Union-party, with all men, looking neither to the right nor the left, pushing steadily on to the great goal of unity, commercial development, and social progress. ”

“ The continued propaganda of the Socialists, and of others who wished to see the Trade Union Movement become an effective political force, which we have described as active from 1884 onwards, did not, for nearly a couple of decades, produce a political " Labour Party." ”

“ In nearly all Unions any suggestion as to the desirability of adopting the middle-class device of entrusting a responsible Executive Committee with the power of choosing its own officers has been resented as undemocratic. [649] In some Unions the indispensable amount of unity is secured, not without internal friction, by the presence of some dominant personality, who may be a secretary or president, or merely a member of the Executive Committee. The same drawback is seen in the constitutions of such wider federations as the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party. ”

“ The Unionists, especially those in Parliament, have been, and are, in a very dangerous position, and have yielded too readily to the temptation of a sudden transference of party loyalty upon almost every question from Liberal to Tory leaders. ”

“ In fact, the sole attack on the union labor administration by its enemies is that it is a political effort to protect the job, to-wit, the property of the union men, to the detriment of the property of other proprietors, the merchant, the manufacturer and the small capitalist. In England, where the unionists went into politics on their own account under the name of the Independent Labor Party, the essential unity of the union man with the petite-bourgeoisie has been shown in the fact that the Independent Labor Party has become little more than an appendage of the Liberal Party. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So, we find the unionists dead set against participation in politics by the organizations. In New York they counselled the unionized workers "not to lend their standard to decorate the pageant of any political procession". In Baltimore politics were disavowed. In Philadelphia, the home of labor politics, it was decided that "no Party, political or religious questions shall at any time be agitated in, or acted upon by this Union." ”

“ Whilst the Trades Union Congress has continued anxiously and nervously to abstain from any attempt to demarcate the spheres of rival Unions or to improve their mutual relations, action which would have brought the Parliamentary Com- mittee dangerously into conflict with one or other of its constituents, and has confined its attention as much as ever to the statutory and governmental reforms which its various sections desired, it has been progressively over- shadowed, on the political side, by the rise of the Labour Party, to be described in a subsequent chapter. ”

“ The union is to be composed of so many equal units who will work the same number of hours for the some wages, and no one of whom is to receive more pay even for more work. The unionist, that is, has come to depend upon his union for that material prosperity and advancement which, according to the American tradition, was to be the inevitable result of American political ideas and institutions. His attachment to his union has come to be the most important attachment of his life—more important in most cases than his attachment to the American ideal and to the national interest. ”

“ It has even progressed beyond adherence to political action for political purposes, having urged the unions to enter upon a general strike in the Russian and other questions. At the same time it has grown numerically, until now it is the largest party outside the Coalition government. It has already captured many local governments, and hopes before many years to have a majority in Parliament. Organized labor is almost solidly behind it, and it has long been supported by trade-union funds. ”

“ By 1913, in spite of a large number of injunctions restraining Trade Unions from affiliating, the Labour Party could count on a membership of nearly two millions, and this number has since steadily grown. ”

“ Where the business agents connected up with local politicians, the higher-up officials sat in with the Big Capitalists and national party riggers in the Civic Federation, and the whole craft union system was dominated by an influence foreign, alien and inimical to the working class interest. ”

“ The Trade Unionists at this time were the advanced guard of the working class party; and although, early in the day, the sense of superiority to the unskilled workers began to show itself among the members, much of the success which was obtained could never have been got without their aid. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A like failure to strike the imagination characterised The Daily Citizen—the organ which the Labour Party and the Trade Union Movement had established with such high hopes—and its inability to gain either intellectual influence or adequate circulation did not lighten the somewhat gloomy atmosphere of the Labour Party councils of 1913-14. ”

“ The very basis of the Labour Party, upon which alone it has proved possible to build up a successful political force the combination, within a political federation, of Trade Unions having extensive membership and not very intense political energy, and Socialist societies of relatively scanty membership but over- flowing with political talent and zeal necessarily led to complications. ”

“ Had he stood alone, he would have added little to the strength of Trade Unionism ; as the loyal adherent of the great officials and their popular mouth- piece to the working-class world, Unionist and non-Unionist alike, he gave the movement a wider basis, and attracted into its ranks every ardent reformer belonging to the artisan class. ”

“ I have heard Imperial questions discussed by working men in excellent speeches, not only eloquent speeches, but speeches showing a broad grasp and a truly Imperial spirit, and I should like speeches of that kind to be heard in the House of Commons as an antidote to the sort of preaching which we get from the present Labour members. And what I say about the higher posts in the Unionist Army applies equally to all other ranks. No Unionist member or Unionist candidate is really well served unless he has a number of men of the working class on what I may call his political staff. ”

“ Hence the deliberate and formal opening of the Party, through the Local Labour Parties, to “workers by brain” as well as “workers by hand”; and the explicit adoption, as a programme, of Labour and the New Social Order were not such innovations as the newspapers made out and as the public generally supposed. But they created a sensation, not only in the United Kingdom, but also in the United States and in the British Dominions ”

“ One local union in the East ... becomes a greater responsibility to the general organization than three local unions in the West. [202]
At the same time that the industrial unionists were pushing their strike propaganda some of them who were also members of the radical political parties were trying to bring those parties (viz., the Socialist party and the Socialist Labor party) together. To do this they realized that the two parties must agree upon a policy in regard to the attitude which the party should assume toward the trade unions. ”

“ It was no longer possible for the Parliamentary Committee to denounce the Socialists as a set of outside intriguers, when Burns and Mann, now become the representative working-men Socialists, stood at the head of a body of 200,000 hitherto unorganised workmen. The general secretaries of the older Unions, forming a com- pact official party behind the Front Bench, were veering
408 The Old Unionism and the New
around towards the advanced party. Their constituencies were becoming permeated with Socialism. In many instances the older members now supported the new faith. ”

“ Municipal Socialism 413
every working-class Socialist to become a member of his Trade Union, to belong to the local Co-operative Society, and generally to take as active a part as possible in all organisations. Instead of denouncing partial reforms as mischievous attempts to defeat " the Social Revolution," the New Unionist leaders appealed to their followers to put their own representatives on Town Councils, and generally to use their electoral influence to bring about, in a regular and constitutional manner, the particular changes they had at heart. ”