Part 25 (1/2)
Let us take note of some representative Socialist opinions on the British Parliament. ”The House of Commons is a machine elaborately contrived by the exploiting cla.s.ses to serve their own ends. In the race for Parliamentary seats the wisest and the best are nowhere. They are rarely even permitted to start. The prizes are for the richest, the most unscrupulous, cunning, and pus.h.i.+ng. And without a complete revolution in our ideas regarding the objects as well as the methods of legislation, it must always remain so.”[568] ”Parliament is appointed, we are told, to fulfil the will of the nation. Then why doesn't it do it? If it has a job to do, why does it stand day after day, week after week, year after year, cackling, cackling, cackling about it? Can the mind of man conceive anything more intensely ridiculous than this spectacle solemnly presented for our admiration by the champions of the system, of six hundred garrulous old gentlemen making a set and formal business of cackling--cackling, cackling, cackling, with infinite pride in their own preposterous squeaking and nagging, and then filing out one by one at intervals, like a stately Lord Mayor's procession in the kingdom of the black and white penguins? What is to be done with such a museum?”[569] ”Government by Parliament is a preposterous pretence--a delusion and a snare to the people. It is a gag imposed by the cla.s.ses on the aspirations of the ma.s.ses. Our Parliamentary representation is a fraud. If we could appeal directly to the whole people as to whether willing workers should starve, or little children suffer hunger, then something might be done. But how can the electors express their desires on this vital matter under our present electoral system?”[570]
Socialists complain that Parliament is run by a cla.s.s. ”It is colossal impudence for a party paper to talk against 'cla.s.s representation.'
Every cla.s.s is over-represented--except the great working cla.s.s. The mines, the railways, the drink trade, the land, finance, the army (officers), the navy (officers), the Church, the law, and most of the big industries (employers) are represented largely in the House of Commons. And nearly thirty millions of the working cla.s.ses are represented by about a dozen men, most of whom are palsied by their allegiance to the Liberal party.”[571] ”The rich man's club at St.
Stephen's is merely a committee of plutocrats--rentmongers, interestmongers, and profitmongers--a.s.sembled for the purpose of safeguarding the spoils which the 'cla.s.ses' have theftuously contrived to heap up.”[572] ”The inequality of representation of cla.s.ses in Parliament at present is somewhat startling. It stands as follows:
_House of Lords_
Capitalist members 614 Labour members 0 --- Total 614
_House of Commons_
Capitalist members 640 Labour members 30 --- Total 670
”That is, we have 640 members representing the interests of, say, 6,000,000 of persons, and 30 members representing the interests of 37,000,000.”[573] ”As recipients of rents, royalties, interests, and dividends, some 600 of the representatives of the people in the House of Commons are parasites upon the people's backs. The railway shareholders have 78 representatives; the railway workers, nearly 400,000 strong, have one. One hundred and eighty thousand landed proprietors have 155 members; 1,000,000 agricultural labourers have one. Coal-mine owners have 21; and 655,000 miners have seven members.
The s.h.i.+powners and builders have 22 representatives; the 200,000 sailors have none.”[574]
”The social composition of the House of Commons is as follows: 124 lawyers, 108 manufacturers (including brewers, colliery-owners, &c.), 85 landowners, 64 merchants and shopkeepers, 37 army and navy men, 33 journalists and authors, 28 financiers, 23 professors, teachers, &c., 18 Civil servants, 18 newspaper proprietors and publishers, 16 heirs to the peerage, 67 of miscellaneous occupations and professions, and 50 working men. Thus the bulk of the present House of Commons consists of rent, profit, and interest mongers and their hirelings and hangers-on. The exploited ma.s.ses of the people are only represented by fifty men.”[575]
See your masters, how unceasingly they strive to keep you down, How they manage all your business up in Parliament and town; Well, it is not quite your business, for it really is their own.
And that is why the millions of the toilers slave and groan.[576]
”On the top of all this political chicanery and impudent pretence of popular representation, there sits an autocratic, irresponsible, hereditary legislative body, consisting exclusively of idlers and parasites who reserve to themselves the right of rejecting all laws which do not clearly further their own exactions and monopolies! Then ask yourselves: Of what use is Parliament? Of what use can it ever be to the ma.s.s of the common people?”[577]
Parliament is not only useless to the worker, but is also, according to the Socialists, utterly corrupt and callous to the sufferings of the people. ”Whenever an American is met abroad with the a.s.sertion that government in the Republic is corrupt, he can safely say that for one ounce of corruption in America there is a full pound avoirdupois in Britain.”[578] ”It is extremely doubtful, indeed, whether either slavery or the slave-trade would be abandoned in the British Empire if they still existed to-day, and their abrogation and suppression depended upon the English House of Commons. The hideous corruption in that a.s.sembly and the utter indifference of the majority of its plutocratic members and their retainers to the welfare of any people, at home or abroad, where money is to be made by neglecting the commonest rules of ethics, have never been so clearly manifested as they are to-day.”[579]
”The suffrage in Great Britain is very unsatisfactory, as the following table shows:
Per cent. of the population having a vote.
France 27.9 Switzerland 23.5 Greece 23.0 Spain 22.4 Belgium 21.5 Germany 21.2 Bulgaria 21.2 Norway 19.9 Austria 19.9 Portugal 19.0 Great Britain 16.5 Denmark 16.4 Servia 16.0 Holland 16.0
As to England, she occupies a very low place in the scale. But then the people here have not even got universal suffrage! And this is a 'democratic,' 'self-governing' community.”[580]
Furthermore, ”The time has come when members of Parliament will have to receive payment for their services in the House of Commons, because the people have realised that they cannot be adequately represented only by men of wealth and position who are able to pay their own expenses.”[581]
The national Administration is quite as unsatisfactory to Socialists as is the national Parliament. ”To-day honesty wears rags, and rascality and idleness wear robes. Every pint of beer, and every drop of wine or spirits the workers drink, every pipe of tobacco or cigar they smoke, every cup of tea, coffee, or cocoa they drink, every patent medicine they purchase, every dog they keep, every pound of sugar they use, even their playing cards and their insurance policies, are taxed to help to pay big salaries and pensions to the younger sons of the aristocracy, &c. The eldest sons live on the family estate; the younger live on the State. One becomes a lawyer, and will lie for anyone who will pay him well; another becomes an officer in the army or navy, and he will cut the throat of anyone in return for a good salary; another becomes a parson, and in return for a good stipend he will pray for anyone; the others are quartered on the consular or the diplomatic service, or are placed as clerks at _1,000l._ per year in the Colonial, Foreign, or Home Office, &c.”[582] The official Parliamentary Report of the Independent Labour Party for 1907 states: ”Our short experience has been sufficient to teach us that it is as important to democratise our administrative departments as it is to democratise our Statute Book. We have found that the doors to the higher offices in Whitehall are closed to everyone who has not had a middle-cla.s.s or aristocratic education, and recent changes have placed our Civil service more completely in the hands of the wealthy cla.s.ses.”[583]
In the foregoing statements we find some of the princ.i.p.al complaints of the Socialists regarding the national Parliament and Administration. Let us now take note of their wishes and proposals.
Among the ”Immediate Reforms” demanded in the programme of the Social-Democratic Federation we find the following regarding Parliament and the Administration:
”Abolition of the Monarchy. Democratisation of the Government machinery, viz. Abolition of the House of Lords, Payment of members of legislative and administrative bodies, Payment of official expenses of elections out of the public funds, Adult suffrage, Proportional representation, Triennial parliaments, Second ballot, initiative and referendum. Foreigners to be granted rights of citizens.h.i.+p after two years' residence in the country, on the recommendation of four British-born citizens, without any fees. Canva.s.sing to be made illegal. Legislation by the people in such wise that no legislative proposal shall become law until ratified by the majority of the people. Legislative and administrative independence for all parts of the Empire.”
As the above demands are somewhat vague, it is worth while to take note of another and clearer statement of the political demands made by the Social-Democratic Federation. ”We of the Democratic Federation demand complete adult suffrage for every man and woman in these islands, because in this way alone can the whole people give free expression to their will; we are in favour of paid delegates and annual conventions, because by this means alone can the people control their representatives; we stand up for the direct references of all grave issues to the country at large and for the punishment as felony of every species of corruption, because thus only can tyranny be checked and bribery be uprooted; we call for the abolition of all hereditary authority, because such authority is necessarily independent of the ma.s.s of the people. But all these reforms, when secured, mean only that the men and women of these islands will at length be masters in their own house. Mere political machinery is worthless unless used to produce good social conditions.”[584]
A widely read Socialist writer formulates the Socialistic demands regarding Parliamentary reform as follows: ”(1) The suffrage should not be given to a man's house or his lodgings, but to the man himself. I believe in adult suffrage, male and female. (2) Const.i.tuencies should be numerically equal, each having three members, one retiring annually by rotation. (3) Cabinets should be chosen annually by the members of the House of Commons, to whom alone they should be responsible. (4) Payment of members and election expenses.
Members should receive reasonable 'wages' according to the ancient practice of the Const.i.tution, while all election expenses (not strictly personal to the candidate) should be defrayed out of the rates. (5) The Monarchy. If we are to have more kings or queens, their cost ought not to exceed that of the President of the United States, viz. _10,000l._ a year. 'The office of a king in this nation is useless, burdensome, and dangerous, and ought to be abolished'
(Resolution of the Long Parliament, 1649). (6) The House of Lords. 'A House of Peers in Parliament is useless and dangerous and ought to be abolished.'”[585]
The Fabian Society proclaims: ”To complete the foundation of the democratic State, we need manhood suffrage, abolition of all poverty disqualifications, abolition of the House of Lords, public payment of candidature expenses, public payment of representatives, and annual elections.”[586]