Britain For The British Part 34

Now a few words as to the three lines of operations. You have your Trade Unions, and you have a very modest kind of Federation. If your 2,000,000 Unionists were federated at a weekly subscription of one penny per man, your yearly income would be nearly half a million: a very useful kind of fund. I should strongly advise you to strengthen your Trades Federation.

Next as to Munic.i.p.al affairs. These are of more importance to you than Parliament. Let me give you an idea. Suppose, as in the case of Manchester and Liverpool, the difference between a private gas company and a Munic.i.p.al gas supply amounts to more than a shilling on each 1000 feet of gas. Setting the average workman's gas consumption at 4000 feet per quarter, that means a saving to each Manchester working man of sixteen shillings a year, or just about fourpence a week.

Suppose a tram company carries a man to his work and back at one penny, and the Corporation carries him at one halfpenny. The man saves a penny a day, or 25s. a year. Now if 100,000 men piled up their tram savings for one year as a labour fund it would come to 125,000.

All that money those men are now giving to tram companies _for nothing_.

Is that practical?

You may apply the same process of thought to all the other things you use. Just figure out what you would save if you had Munic.i.p.al or State managed

Railways Coalmines Tramways Omnibuses Gas Water Milk Bread Meat b.u.t.ter and cheese Vegetables Beer Houses Shops Boots Clothing

and other necessaries.

On all those needful things you are now paying big percentages of profit to private dealers, all of which the Munic.i.p.ality would save you.

And you can munic.i.p.alise all those things and save all that money by sticking together as a Labour Party, and by paying _one penny a week_.

Again I advise you to read those books by George Haw and R. B. Suthers.

Read them, and give them to other workers to read.

And then set about making a Labour Party _at once_.

Next as to Parliament. You ought to put at least 200 Labour members into the House. Never mind Liberalism and Toryism. Mr. Morley said in January that what puzzled him was to "find any difference between the new Liberalism and the new Conservatism." Do not try to find a difference, John. Have a Labour Party.

"Self-interest is the strongest motive in human nature." Take care of your own interests and stand by your own cla.s.s.

You will ask, perhaps, what these 200 Labour representatives are to do.

They should do anything and everything they can do in the House of Commons for the interests of the working cla.s.s.

But if you want programmes and lists of measures, get the Fabian Parliamentary and Munic.i.p.al programmes, and study them. You will find the particulars as to price, etc., at the end of this book.

But here are some measures which you might be pushing and helping whenever a chance presents itself, in Parliament or out of Parliament.

Removal of taxation from articles used by the workers, such as tea and tobacco, and increase of taxation on large incomes and on land.

Compulsory sale of land for the purpose of Munic.i.p.al houses, works, farms, and gardens.

Nationalisation of railways and mines.

Taxation to extinction of all mineral royalties.

Vastly improved education for the working cla.s.ses.

Old age pensions.

Adoption of the Initiative and Referendum.

Universal adult suffrage.

Eight hours' day and standard rates of wages in all Government and Munic.i.p.al works.

Establishment of a Department of Agriculture.

State insurance of life.

Nationalisation of all banks.

The second ballot.

Abolition of property votes.

Formation of a citizen army for home defence.

Abolition of workhouses.

Solid legislation on the housing question.

Government inquiry into the food question, with a view to restore British agriculture.

Those are a few steps towards the desired goal of _Socialism_.

You may perhaps wonder why I do not ask you to found a Socialist Party.

I do not think the workers are ready for it. And I feel that if you found a Labour Party every step you take towards the emanc.i.p.ation of Labour will be a step towards _Socialism_.

But I should like to think that many workers will become Socialists at once, and more as they live and learn.

The fact is, Mr. Smith, I do not want to ask too much of the ma.s.s of working folks, who have been taught little, and mostly taught wrong, and whose opportunities of getting knowledge have been but poor.

I am not asking working men to be plaster saints nor stained-gla.s.s angels, but only to be really what their flatterers are so fond of telling them they are now: shrewd, hard-headed men, distrusting theories and believing in facts.

For the statement that private trading and private management of production and distribution are the best, and the only "possible," ways of carrying on the business of the nation is only a _theory_, Mr. Smith; but the superiority of Munic.i.p.al management in cheapness, in efficiency, in health, in comfort, and in pleasantness is a solid _fact_, Mr. Smith, which has been demonstrated just as often as Munic.i.p.al and private management have been contrasted in their action.

One other question I may antic.i.p.ate. How are the workers to form a Labour Party?

There are already two Labour parties formed.

One is the Trade Union body, the other is the Independent Labour Party.

The Trade Unions are numerous, but not politically organised nor united.

The Independent Labour Party is organised and united, but is weak in numbers and poor in funds.

I should like to see the Trade Unions fully federated, and formed into a political as well as an Industrial Labour Party on lines similar to those of the Independent Labour Party.

Or I should like to see the whole of your 2,000,000 of Trade Unionists join the Independent Labour Party.