Part 8 (1/2)
Amidst all this propaganda of the principles of Socialism the activity of the Society in local government was in no way relaxed. The output of tracts at this period was remarkable. In the year 1890-1, 10 new tracts were published, 335,000 copies printed, and 98,349 sold or given away.
In 1891-2, 20 tracts, 16 of them leaflets of 4 pages, were published, 308,300 printed, and 378,281 distributed, most of them leaflets. This was the maximum. Next year only 272,660 were distributed, though the sales of penny tracts were larger. At this period the Society had a virtual monopoly in the production of political pamphlets in which facts and figures were marshalled in support of propositions of reform in the direction of Socialism. Immense trouble was taken to ensure accuracy and literary excellence. Many of the tracts were prepared by Committees which held numerous meetings. Each of them was criticised in proof both by the Executive and by all the members of the Society. Every tract before publication had to be approved at a meeting of members, when the author or authors had to consider every criticism and justify, amend, or delete the pa.s.sage challenged.
The tracts published in these years included a series of ”Questions” for candidates for Parliament and all the local governing bodies embodying progressive programmes of administration with possible reforms in the law--which the candidate was requested to answer by a local elector and which were used with much effect for some years--and a number of leaflets on Munic.i.p.al Socialism, extracted from ”Facts for Londoners.”
In 1891 the first edition of ”What to Read: A List of Books for Social Reformers,” cla.s.sified in a somewhat elaborate fas.h.i.+on, was prepared by Graham Wallas, the fifth edition of which, issued as a separate volume in 1910, is still in print. ”Facts for Bristol,” drafted by the gentleman who is now Sir Hartmann Just, K.C.M.G., C.B., was the only successful attempt out of many to apply the method of ”Facts for Londoners” to other cities.
It is impossible for me to estimate how far the Progressive policy of London in the early nineties is to be attributed to the influence of the Fabian Society. That must be left to the judgment of those who can form an impartial opinion. Something, however, the Society must have contributed to create what was really a remarkable political phenomenon.
London up to 1906 was Conservative in politics by an overwhelming majority. In 1892 out of 59 seats the Liberals secured 23, but in 1895 and 1900 they obtained no more than 8 at each election. All this time the Progressive Party in the County Council, which came into office unexpectedly after the confused election in 1889 when the Council was created, maintained itself in power usually by overwhelming majorities, obtained at each succeeding triennial elections in the same const.i.tuencies and with substantially the same electorate that returned Conservatives to Parliament.
In the early nineties the Liberal and Radical Working Men's Clubs of London had a political importance which has since entirely disappeared.
Every Sunday for eight months in the year, and often on weekdays, political lectures were arranged, which were constantly given by Fabians. For instance, in October, 1891, I find recorded in advance twelve courses of two to five lectures each, nine of them at Clubs, and fifteen separate lectures at Clubs, all given by members of the Society.
In October, 1892, eleven courses and a dozen separate lectures by our members at Clubs are notified. These were all, or nearly all, arranged by the Fabian office, and it is needless to say that a number of others were not so arranged or were not booked four or five weeks in advance.
Our list of over a hundred lecturers, with their subjects and private addresses, was circulated in all directions and was constantly used by the Clubs, as well as by all sorts of other societies which required speakers.
Moreover, in addition to ”Facts for Londoners,” Sidney Webb published in 1891 in Sonnenschein's ”Social Science Series” a volume ent.i.tled ”The London Programme,” which set out his policy, and that of the Society, on all the affairs of the metropolis. The Society had at this time much influence through the press. ”The London Programme” had appeared as a series of articles in the Liberal weekly ”The Speaker.” The ”Star,”
founded in 1888, was promptly ”collared,” according to Bernard Shaw,[27]
who was its musical critic, and who wrote in it, so it was said, on every subject under the sun except music! Mr. H.W. Ma.s.singham, a.s.sistant editor of the ”Star,” was elected to the Society and its Executive simultaneously in March, 1891, and in 1892 he became a.s.sistant editor of the ”Daily Chronicle,” under a sympathetic chief, Mr. A.E. Fletcher.
Mrs. Besant and the Rev. Stewart Headlam had been elected to the London School Board in 1888, and had there a.s.sisted a Trade Union representative in getting adopted the first Fair Wages Clause in Contracts. But in the first London County Council the Society, then a tiny body, was not represented.
At the second election in 1892 six of its members were elected to the Council and another was appointed an alderman. Six of these were members best known to the public as Trade Unionists or in other organisations, but Sidney Webb, who headed the poll at Deptford with 4088 votes, whilst his Progressive colleague received 2503, and four other candidates only 5583 votes between them, was a Fabian and nothing else. He had necessarily to resign his appointment in the Colonial Office, and thenceforth was able to devote all his time to politics and literary work. Webb was at once elected chairman of the Technical Education Board, which up to 1904 had the management of all the education in the county, other than elementary, which came under public control. The saying is attributed to him that according to the Act of Parliament Technical Education could be defined as any education above elementary except Greek and Theology, and the Board under his chairmans.h.i.+p--he was chairman for eight years--did much to bring secondary and university education within the reach of the working people of London. From 1892 onwards there was always a group of Fabians on the London County Council, working in close alliance with the ”Labour Bench,” the Trade Unionists who then formed a group of the Progressive Party under the leaders.h.i.+p of John Burns. Under this silent but effective influence the policy of the Progressives was largely identical with the immediate munic.i.p.al policy of the Society itself, and the members of the Society took a keen and continuous interest in the triennial elections and the work of the Council.
All this concern in local administration did not interfere with the interest taken by the Society in parliamentary politics, and one ill.u.s.tration of this may be mentioned. The Liberal Party has a traditional feud with Landlordism, and at this period its favourite panacea was Leasehold Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, that is, the enactment of a law empowering leaseholders of houses built on land let for ninety-nine years, the common practice in London, to purchase the freehold at a valuation. Many Conservatives had come round to the view that the breaking up of large town estates and the creation of numerous freeholders, would strengthen the forces upholding the rights of property, and there was every prospect that the Bill would be pa.s.sed. A few hours before the debate on April 29th, 1891, a leaflet (Tract No.
22) was published explaining the futility of the proposal from the Fabian standpoint, and a copy was sent to every member of Parliament. To the astonishment of the Liberal leaders a group of Radicals, including the present Lord Haldane and Sir Edward Grey, opposed the Bill, and it was defeated by the narrow majority of 13 in a house numbering 354. A few years later the proposal was dropped out of the Liberal programme, and the Leasehold Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt a.s.sociation itself adopted a new name and a revised policy.
But the main object of the Fabians was to force on the Liberal Party a programme of constructive social reform. With few exceptions their members belonged or had belonged to that party, and it was not difficult, now that London had learned the value of the Progressive policy, to get resolutions accepted by Liberal a.s.sociations demanding the adoption of a programme. Sidney Webb in 1888 printed privately a paper ent.i.tled ”Wanted a Programme: An Appeal to the Liberal Party,” and sent it out widely amongst the Liberal leaders. The ”Star” and the ”Daily Chronicle” took care to publish these resolutions, and everything was done, which skilful agitators knew, to make a popular demand for a social reform programme. We did what all active politicians in a democratic country must do; we decided what the people ought to want, and endeavoured to do two things, which after all are much the same thing, to make the people want it, and to make it appear that they wanted it. The result--how largely attributable to our efforts can hardly now be estimated--was the Newcastle Program, reluctantly blessed by Mr. Gladstone and adopted by the National Liberal Federation in 1891.[28]
The General Election of 1892 was antic.i.p.ated with vivid interest. Since the election of 1886 English Socialism had come into being and Trade Unionism had been transformed by the rise of the Dockers, and the other ”new” unions of unskilled labour. But a Labour Party was still in the future, and our Election Manifesto (Tract 40), issued in June, bluntly tells the working cla.s.ses that until they form a party of their own they will have to choose between the parties belonging to the other cla.s.ses.
The Manifesto, written by Bernard Shaw, is a brilliant essay on labour in politics and a criticism of both the existing parties; it a.s.sures the working cla.s.ses that they could create their own party if they cared as much about politics as they cared for horse-racing (football was not in those days the typical sport); and it concludes by advising them to vote for the better, or against the worse, man, on the ground that progress was made by steps, a step forward was better than a step backward, and the only thing certain is the defeat of a party which sulks and does not vote at all. The Manifesto was widely circulated by the then vigorous local societies, and no doubt had some effect, though the intensity of the antipathy to Liberal Unionism on the one side and to Home Rule on the other left little chance for other considerations.
Six members of the Society were candidates, but none of them belonged to the group which had made its policy and conducted its campaign. In one case, Ben Tillett at West Bradford, the Society took an active part in the election, sending speakers and collecting 152 for the Returning Officer's expenses. Of the six, J. Keir Hardie at West Ham alone was successful, but Tillett did well at West Bradford, polling 2,749, only a few hundred votes below the other two candidates, and preparing the field for the harvest which F.W. Jowett reaped in 1906.
The result of the election, which took place in July, was regarded as a justification for the Fabian policy of social advance. In London, where Liberalism was strongly tainted with it, the result was ”as in 1885,”
the year of Liberal victory, and the only Liberal seat lost was that of the President of the Leasehold Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt a.s.sociation! In the industrial cities, and in Scotland, where Liberalism was still individualist, the result was rather as in 1886, when Liberalism lost.
In London also ”by far the largest majorities were secured by Mr. John Burns and Mr. Keir Hardie, who stood as avowed Socialists, and by Mr.
Sydney Buxton, whose views are really scarcely less advanced than theirs.”[29]
I have pointed out that Fabian policy began with State Socialism, and in quite early days added to it Munic.i.p.al Socialism; but in 1888 the authors of ”Fabian Essays” appeared to be unconscious of Trade Unionism and hostile to the Co-operative movement. The Dock Strike of 1889 and the lecturing in London clubs and to the artisans of the north pointed the way to a new development. Moreover, in the summer of 1892 Sidney Webb had married Miss Beatrice Potter, author of an epoch-making little book, ”The Co-operative Movement,” and together they were at work on their famous ”History of Trade Unionism.”
The ”Questions” for local governing bodies issued in 1892 were full of such matters as fair wages, shorter hours, and proper conditions for labour, and it was speedily discovered that this line of advance was the best suited to Fabian tactics because it was a series of skirmishes all over the country, in which scores and hundreds could take part. Each locality had then or soon afterwards three or four elected local councils, and hardly any Fabian from one end of the country to the other would be unable in one way or another to strike a blow or lift a finger for the improvement of the conditions of publicly employed labour.
But the Government of Mr. Gladstone had not been in office for much more than a year before a much more ambitious enterprise on this line was undertaken. In March, 1893, Sir Henry (then Mr.) Campbell-Bannerman had pledged the Government to ”show themselves to be the best employers of labour in the country”: ”we have ceased,” he said, ”to believe in what are known as compet.i.tion or starvation wages.” That was a satisfactory promise, but enunciating a principle is one thing and carrying it into effect in scores of departments is another. Mr. Gladstone, of course, was interested only in Home Rule. Permanent officials doubtless obstructed, as they usually do: and but a few members of the Cabinet accepted or understood the new obligation. The Fabian Society knew the Government departments from the inside, and it was easy for the Executive to ascertain how labour was treated under each chief, what he had done and what he had left undone. At that time legislative reforms were difficult because the Government majority was both small and uncertain, whilst the whole time of Parliament was occupied by the necessary but futile struggle to pa.s.s a Home Rule Bill for the Lords to destroy. But administrative reforms were subject to no such limitations: wages and conditions of labour were determined by the department concerned, and each minister could do what he chose for the workmen virtually in his employment, except perhaps in the few cases, such as the Post Office, where the sums involved were very large, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer had the same opportunity.