Chapter XI: Political Organisation (2)

The Democracy of Associations of Consumers, whatever its shortcomings and defects, has, we suggest, the great advantage of being demonstrably practicable. The job can be done. It has also the further merit that it solves the problem presented by what the economists call the Law of Rent. It does not leave to any individual or group of individuals the appropriation and enjoyment of those advantages of superior sites and soils, and other differential factors in production, which should be, economically and ethically, taken only by the community as a whole. Moreover, management by Associations of Consumers, whether National, Municipal, or Co-operative, gives one practical solution to the problem of fixing prices without competition, by enabling every producer to be paid at his own full Standard Rate, and distributing the various products at prices just over cost, the whole eventual surplus being returned to the purchasers in a rebate or discount on purchases, called “dividend”; or otherwise appropriated for the benefit and by direction of the consumers themselves. Hence there is no danger of private monopoly; no opportunity for particular groups of producers to make corners in raw materials; to get monopoly prices for commodities in times of scarcity, or to resist legitimate improvements in machinery or processes merely because these would interfere with the vested interests of the persons owning particular instruments of production or possessing a particular kind of skill. In short, the control of industries and services by Democracies of Consumers realises the Socialist principle of production for use and not for exchange, with all its manifold advantages. The most significant of these superiorities of Production for Use over Production for Exchange is its inevitable effect on the structure and working of Democracy. Seeing that the larger the output the smaller the burden of overhead charges--or, to put it in another way, the greater the membership the more advantageous the enterprise--Associations of Consumers are not tempted to close their ranks. This kind of Democracy automatically remains always open to new-comers. On the other hand, Associations of Producers, whether capitalists, technicians or manual workers, exactly because they turn out commodities and services not for their own use, but for exchange, are perpetually impelled to limit their numbers, so as to get, for the existing membership, the highest possible remuneration. This kind of Democracy is, therefore, instinctively exclusive, tending always to become, within the community, a privileged body. All this amounts to a solid reason in favour of “nationalisation,” “municipalisation,” and the consumers’ Co-operative Movement, which is reflected in the continuous and actually accelerating extension of all of them, not in one country only, but throughout the civilised world.[734]

But the Democracy based on Associations of Consumers, whether in the National Government, the Municipality, or the Co-operative Society, reveals certain shortcomings and defects, some transient and resulting only from the existing Capitalism, and others needing the remedy of a complementary Democracy of Producers. So long as we have a society characterised by gross inequalities of income, it is inevitable that the conduct of industries and services by Associations of Consumers should be even more advantageous to the rich than to the poor, and of little or no use to those who are destitute. The same trail of a Capitalist environment affects also the conditions of employment. The Co-operative Society, the Municipality or the Government Department cannot practically depart far from the normal conditions of the rest of the community; and thus avails little to raise the condition of the manual working class. If, however, the Associations of Consumers were co-extensive with the community, they would themselves fix the standard. But there is a more fundamental criticism. The Democracy of Consumers, in Co-operative Society, Municipality or State--however wide may be the franchise, however effective may be the Parliamentary machinery, and however much the elected executive is brought under constituency control--has the outstanding defect to the manual-working producer that, so far as his own working life is concerned, he does not feel it to be Democracy at all! The management, it is complained, is always “government from above.” It is exactly for this reason that in the evolution of British Democracy the conduct of industries and services by Associations of Consumers--whether in the voluntary Co-operative Society or in the geographically organised Municipality or State--has had, for a correlative, the organisation of Associations of Producers, whether Professional Societies or Trade Unions. Their first object was merely to maintain and improve their members’ Standard of Life. Without the enforcement of a Standard Rate and protection against personal tyranny, government by Associations of Consumers is apt to develop many of the evils of the “sweating” characteristic of unrestrained capitalism. It is not now denied, even by the economists, that Trade Unionism, in its establishment of the Doctrine of the Common Rule, and the elaboration of this into the Standard Rate, the Normal Day, and the Policy of the National Minimum, has to its credit during the past three-quarters of a century no small measure of success, with more triumphs easily within view. Trade Unionism among the manual workers, like Professional Association among the brain-workers,[735] has emphatically justified itself by its achievements.

But Trade Unionism, though it has gone far to protect the worker from tyranny, has not, as yet, gained for him any positive participation in industrial management. To this extent the complaints of the objectors among the manual-working class are justified. In the perpetual see-saw of opinion in the Labour world the movement towards Parliamentary action and in favour of what we may call Communal Socialism became, at one time, almost an infatuation, in that its most enthusiastic advocates thought that it would, by itself, solve all problems. A reaction was inevitable. The danger is that this reaction may itself take on the character of an infatuation--this time in favour of the universal domination of Associations of Producers, and the “Direct Action” to which they are prone--against which, in the perpetual see-saw, there will come, in its turn, a contrary reaction, in the course of which Trade Unionism itself may suffer.

This is not to say that the legitimate and desirable movement, specially characteristic of the present century, for increased direct participation in “management” of the Associations of Producers--whether of Professional Societies or of Trade Unions, of doctors and teachers, or of miners and railwaymen--has been, in this or any other country, anything like exhausted. In our view, in fact, it is along these lines that the next developments are to be expected. But, unless we are mistaken in our analysis, this does not mean that the Trade Unions or Professional Societies will take over the entire management of their industries or services, for which, in our opinion, no Association of Producers can be fitted.[736] Democracies of Producers, like Democracies of Consumers, have their peculiar defects, and develop certain characteristic toxins from the very intensity of the interests that they represent. The chief of these defects is the corporate exclusiveness and corporate selfishness habitually developed by associations based on the common interest of a particular section of workers, as against other sections of workers on the one hand, and against the whole body of consumers and citizens on the other. When Democracies of Producers own the instruments of production, or even secure a monopoly of the service to be rendered, they have always tended in the past to close their ranks, to stereotype their processes and faculties, to exclude outsiders and to ban heterodoxy. We see this tendency at work alike in the ancient and modern world, in the castes of India and the Gilds of China, in the mediæval Craft Gilds as well as in the modern Trade Unions and Professional Associations. So long as the Trade Union is an organ of revolt against the Capitalist System--so long as the manual workers are fighting a common enemy in the private owner of land and capital--this corporate selfishness is held in check; though the frequency of demarcation disputes, even in the Trade Union Movement of to-day, gives some indication of what might happen if the Trade Union became an organ of government. We see no way of securing the community of consumers and citizens against this spirit of corporate exclusiveness, and against the inherent objection of an existing generation of producers to new methods of working unfamiliar to them, otherwise than placing the supreme control in the Democracies of Consumers and citizens. There is a further and more subtle defect in Democracies of Producers, the very mention of which may perhaps be resented by those Industrial Unionists who seek to curb the “corporateness” of National Gilds by the “self-government” of the workshop. The experience of self-governing workshops shows that the relationship between the indispensable director or manager (who must, like the conductor of an orchestra, decide the tune and set the time) and the workers whom he directs becomes hopelessly untenable if this director or manager is elected or dismissible by the very persons to whom he gives orders. Over and over again, in the records of the almost innumerable self-governing workshops that have been established in Great Britain or on the Continent, we find their failure intimately connected with the impracticable position of a manager directing the workers during the day, and being reprimanded or altogether superseded by a committee meeting of these same workers in the evening! Finally, there is the difficult question of the price to be put on the article when it passes to the consumer. Normally the price of a commodity must cover the cost of production, and this cost is, in the main, determined by the character of the machinery and process employed. Hence, if the organised workers are given the power to decide not only the number and qualifications of the persons to be employed but also the machinery and process to be used, they will, in fact, determine the price to be charged to the consumer--not always to the consumer’s advantage, or consistently with the interests of other sections of workers.[737]

To sum up, we expect to see the supreme authority in each industry or service vested, not in the workers as such, but in the community as a whole. Any National Board may well include representatives of the producers of the particular product or service, and also of its consumers, but they must be reinforced by the presence of representatives of the community organised as citizens, interested in the future as well as the present prosperity of the community. The management of industry, a complex function of many kinds and grades, will, as we see it, not be the sole sphere of either the one or the other set of partners, but is clearly destined to be distributed between them--the actual direction and decision being shared between the representatives of the Trade Union or Professional Society on the one hand, and those of the community in Co-operative Society, Municipality, or National Government on the other. And this recognition of the essential partnership in management between Associations of Producers and that Association of Consumers which is the community in one or other form, will, we suggest, take different shapes in different industries and services, in different countries, and at different periods; and, as we must add, will necessarily take time and thought to work out in detail. One thing is clear. There will be a steadily increasing recognition of a fundamental change in the status both of the directors and managers of industry (who are now usually either themselves capitalists, or hired for the service of capitalist interests), and of the technicians and manual workers. The directors and managers of industry, however they may be selected and paid, will become increasingly the officers of the community, serving not their own but the whole community’s interests. The technicians and manual workers will become ever less and less the personal servants of the directors and managers; and will be more and more enrolled, like them, in the service, not of any private employer, but of the community itself, whether the form be that of State or Municipality or Co-operative Society, or any combination or variant of these. To use the expression of the present General Secretary of the Miners’ Federation (Frank Hodges), manager, technician, and manual worker alike will become parties to a “social” as distinguished from a commercial contract. All alike, indeed, whatever may be the exact form of ownership of the instruments of production, will, so far as function is concerned, become increasingly partners in the performance of a common public service.

We see in this evolution a great future for the Trade Unions, if they will, in organisation and personal equipment, rise to the height of their enlarged function. They will need, by amalgamation or federation, and by affording facilities for easy admission and for a simple transfer of membership, to make themselves much more nearly than at present co-extensive with their several industries. They will have to make special provision in their constitutions to secure an effective representation, on their own executive and legislative councils, of distinct crafts, grades, or specialisations, which must always form small minorities of the whole body. They will find it necessary to make the local organisation of their members, in branch or district, much more coincident than at present with their members’ several places of employment, so as to approximate to making identical the workshop and the branch. There would seem to be a great development opening up for the Works Committees and the “Shop Stewards,” brought effectively into organic relation with the nationally settled industrial policy. At any rate, in industries already passing under the control of Associations of Consumers, whether by nationalisation or municipalisation, or by the spread of consumers’ co-operation, there will be great scope for District Councils and National Boards, as well as for Advisory and Research Committees representative of different specialities, in which managers and foremen, technicians and operatives, will jointly supersede the capitalist Board of Directors. But the management of each industry is very far from being the whole of the task. In Parliament itself, and on Municipal Councils, the World of Labour, by hand or by brain, will need to give a continuous and an equal backing to its own political party, in order to see to it that it has its own representatives--specialised and trained for this supreme political function--not by ones and twos, but in force; gradually coming, in fact, to predominate over the representatives of the surviving capitalist and landlord parties. Trade Unionists, in the mass, will not only have to continue and extend the loyalty and self-devotion which have always been characteristic of successful Trade Unionism, but also to acquire a more comprehensive understanding of the working of democratic institutions, a more accurate appreciation of the imperative necessity of combining both the leading types of democratic self-government--on the one hand the self-government based on the common needs of the whole population divided into geographical constituencies, and on the other the self-government springing from the special requirements of men and women bound together by the fellowship of a common task and a common technique. The Trade Unions and Professional Societies, if they are increasingly to participate in the government of their industries and services, will in particular have to provide themselves with a greater number of whole-time specialist representatives, better paid and more considerately treated than at present, and supplied with increased opportunities for education and training.

We end on a note of warning. The object and purpose of the workers, organised vocationally in Trade Unions and Professional Associations, and politically in the Labour Party, is no mere increase of wages or reduction of hours.[738] It comprises nothing less than a reconstruction of society, by the elimination, from the nation’s industries and services, of the Capitalist Profitmaker, and the consequent shrinking up of the class of functionless persons who live merely by owning. Profit-making as a pursuit, with its sanctification of the motive of pecuniary self-interest, is the demon that has to be exorcised. The journey of the Labour Party towards its goal must necessarily be a long and arduous one. In the painful “Pilgrim’s Progress” of Democracy the workers will be perpetually tempted into by-paths that lead only to the Slough of Despond. It is not so much the enticing away of individuals in the open pursuit of wealth that is to be feared, as the temptation of particular Trade Unions, or particular sections of the workers, to enter into alliances with Associations of Capitalist Employers for the exploitation of the consumer. “Co-partnership,” or profit-sharing with individual capitalists, has been seen through and rejected. But the “co-partnership” of Trade Unions with Associations of Capitalists--whether as a development of “Whitley Councils” or otherwise--which far-sighted capitalists will presently offer in specious forms (with a view, particularly, to Protective Customs Tariffs and other devices for maintaining unnecessarily high prices, or to governmental favours and remissions of taxation) is, we fear, hankered after by some Trade Union leaders, and might be made seductive to particular grades or sections of workers. Any such policy, however plausible, would in our judgement be a disastrous undermining of the solidarity of the whole working class, and a formidable obstacle to any genuine Democratic Control of Industry, as well as to any general progress in personal freedom and in the more equal sharing of the National Product.

FOOTNOTES:

[707] See his _Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart_, 1871-72; his more generalised survey, _Das Arbeitsverhältniss gemäss den heutigen Recht_ (Leipsic, 1877), translated as _The Relation of Labour to the Law of To-day_ (New York, 1890); and his article on “The Growth of a Trades Union,” in the _North British Review_, October 1870.

[708] Sec. 24 of the Factory Act of 1891 provides, as regards textile manufactures, that the employer shall supply every worker by the piece with certain particulars as to the quantity of work and rate of remuneration for it.

[709] _History of Trade Unionism_, by S. and B. Webb, 1st ed., 1894, pp. 476-78.

[710] The most important sources of information are the Annual Reports of the Trades Union Congress, 1874-1919, and other publications of its Parliamentary Committee; those of the Annual Conferences of the Labour Representation Committee, 1901-5, and of the Labour Party, 1906-19, together with the Party’s other publications, especially _Labour and the New Social Order_, 1918; the reports and contemporary publications of the Socialist Societies, especially the Independent Labour Party from 1893, and the Fabian Society from 1884; _Labour Year Book_ for 1916 and 1919; _History of British Socialism_, by M. Beer, vol. ii., 1920; _History of the British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, 2 vols., 1910, 1916; _Die englische Arbeiterpartei_, by G. Guettler, 1914; _Aims of Labour_, by Rt. Hon. A. Henderson, 1918; _History of the Fabian Society_, by E. R. Pease, 1916; _History of Labour Representation_, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912; biographies of Joseph Arch, Henry Broadhurst, Robert Applegarth, Thomas Burt, John Wilson, J. H. Thomas, W. J. Davis, etc.

[711] The movement for “Labour Representation” (which “at that time meant working-men members of Parliament and nothing else,” _History of Labour Representation_, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912) was first got under way by George Potter’s London Working Men’s Association in 1866, mentioned at the end of Chapter VI. At the second Trades Union Congress, at Birmingham in 1869, a paper had been read on “Direct Labour Representation in Parliament,” but Congress took no action. A separate “Labour Representation League” was then formed under the presidency of R. M. Lathom, a Chancery barrister, to which many leading Trade Unionists belonged, of which Henry Broadhurst was secretary from 1872 to about 1878, and which sought from the Liberal Party opportunities for the return of a few working-class members; but (as formerly in the cases of William Newton’s contest for the Tower Hamlets in 1852 and George Odger’s at Southwark in 1870) in vain. At the General Election of 1874, as we have already described, fourteen workmen went to the poll; but in ten of the constituencies they were fought by both parties, and only in the other four did the Liberals allow them to be fought by Conservatives alone, with the result that two only (out of the latter four) were elected, namely, Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt. At the General Election in 1880, again with Liberal acquiescence, Henry Broadhurst was added to their number; and in 1885 this was raised to eleven (of whom six were miners). All these, whilst pushing measures desired by the Trade Unions, acted habitually with the Liberal Party. In 1886--the Labour Representation League having faded away about 1881--the Congress appointed a “Labour Electoral Committee” to do the same work; but this was never able to free itself from subserviency to the Liberal Party, and it achieved no success, dying away in 1893. Some personal reminiscences are given in “Labour Representation Thirty Years Ago,” by Henry Broadhurst, M.P., in the _Fourth Annual Report of General Federation of Trade Unions_, 1903; see also _History of Labour Representation_, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912.

[712] In a “scribbling diary” of 1884 is the following entry:

“Written by Jas. K. Hardie, born August 15, 1856, married August 3, 1879, began work as a message boy in Glasgow when 8 years and 9 months old, wrought for some time also in a printing office in Trongate, in the brass finishing shop of the Anchor Line Shipping Co., also as a rivet heater in Thompson’s heatyard. Left Glasgow in the year 1866 and went into No. 18 pit of the Moss at Newarthill, from thence to Quarter Iron Works, and again to one or two other collieries in neighbourhood of Hamilton. Was elected Secretary to Miners’ Association in 1878, and for the same position in Ayrshire in 1879; resigned April, 1882, when got appointment unsolicited as correspondent to _Cumnock News_. Brought up an atheist, converted to Christianity in 1878.”

Keir Hardie, whose kindliness and integrity of character endeared him to all who knew him, was from 1887 down to his death in 1915 the apostle of “independency” in the political organisation of Labour. He sat in the Trades Union Congress from 1887 to 1895 as representative of the Ayrshire Miners; and in the House of Commons from 1892 to 1895 (for West Ham), from 1906 to 1915 (for Merthyr). He was Chairman of the “I.L.P.” from 1893 to 1898, and again in 1914. Pending the publication of a biography by W. Stewart, reference may be made to a biographical Sketch entitled _From Pit to Parliament_, by Frank Smith; a character sketch by F. Pethick Lawrence in the _Labour Record_ for August 1905; the issues of the _Labour Leader_ for September 30 and October 7, 1915; and an article entitled “An Old Diary,” by F. J. in the _Socialist Review_, January 1919.

[713] _Annual Report of Trades Union Congress_, 1887.

[714] It is said that the Liberal Party agents attempted, in vain, to bribe him to withdraw; eventually offering as high a price as a safe Liberal seat on the first opportunity, all his election expenses, and £300 a year--if only he would wear the Liberal badge!

[715] See, for instance, the following “Fabian Tracts,” which had a large circulation among Trade Unionists: No. 6 of 1887, “The True Radical Programme”; No. 11 of 1890, “The Workers’ Political Programme”; No. 40 of 1892, “The Fabian Election Manifesto”; No. 49 of 1894, “A Plan of Campaign for Labour” (_History of the Fabian Society_, by E. R. Pease, 1916).

[716] These included John Burns (Amalgamated Society of Engineers), J. Havelock Wilson (National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union), Joseph Arch (Agricultural Labourers’ Union), W. R. (afterwards Sir William) Cremer (General Union of Carpenters), G. Howell (Operative Bricklayers’ Society), J. Rowlands (an ex-watchcase-maker), and eight coalminers.

[717] By J. O’Grady (Furnishing Trades), afterwards M.P. for Leeds; _Annual Report of Trades Union Congress_, 1898.

[718] This was adopted in preference to what was considered a more extreme proposal (moved by P. Vogel of the Waiters’ Union, a Socialist), appointing the Trades Union Congress itself the organisation for independent Labour representation in Parliament; requiring every Union to contribute a halfpenny per member per annum, and making the Parliamentary Committee disburse the election expenses and the salaries of the members returned to the House of Commons (_Annual Report of Trades Union Congress_, 1899).

It was afterwards stated that the leaders of the Trades Union Congress had had in contemplation the subordination of the Labour Representation Committee to the Congress. But with a different constituency the new body had necessarily to be an independent organisation; and in 1904 the General Purposes Committee reported to the Trades Union Congress, which endorsed the report, that any resolution to endorse or amend the constitution of the Labour Representation Committee would not be in order at the Trades Union Congress (_ibid._, 1904).

[719] D. J. (afterwards Sir David) Shackleton (Lancashire Weavers) was allowed a walk-over at Clitheroe in 1902; and in 1903 W. (afterwards the Rt. Honourable W.) Crooks (Coopers) carried Woolwich after an exciting contest, and Arthur (afterwards the Rt. Honourable Arthur) Henderson (Friendly Society of Ironfounders) won Barnard Castle in a three-cornered fight.

[720] In some Unions outside influence, notably that of the railway companies, went to the expense of printing and distributing hundreds of thousands of forms by which dissentient members could claim exemption from the tiny “political” contribution; and in the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, in particular, thousands of such claims were made. The number has now greatly diminished (1920).

[721] _The Daily Citizen_ was started by a separate limited company, in which the control was permanently secured to representatives of the Trade Unions and the Labour Party, on November 8, 1912. The total capital raised from the Trade Unions from first to last was approximately £200,000. This important journalistic venture, starting under good auspices, met with untoward circumstances. It was crippled by a legal decision that Trade Unions had no power to subscribe to its cost, or even to make investments in its shares (an inference from the Osborne Judgement, which was reversed by the Trade Union Act of 1913, subject to compliance with the conditions as to political expenditure). Before this set-back could be got over, the outbreak of war upset all financial calculations, and made the conduct of a newspaper increasingly onerous. The paper stopped on June 5, 1915, and the company was wound up, all creditors being paid in full, but the shareholders losing practically all that they had ventured. The failure was a serious blow to the Labour Party, which has been badly in want of a daily newspaper--a lack supplied in 1919 by the energetic and adventurous _Daily Herald_, which, under the direction of Mr. George Lansbury, has drawn to itself an unusual amount of talent, and now needs only whole-hearted support from the Trade Unions.

[722] It was, for instance, only the determined private resistance of the Trade Unionist leaders of the Labour Party that compelled the Government to abandon its project of introducing several hundred thousand Chinese labourers into Great Britain; a project which, if carried out, not only might have been calamitous in its effect upon the Standard of Life of the British workman--not to mention other evil consequences--but would almost certainly have also led to a Labour revolt against the continuance of the war. In this connection may be noted the valuable work done throughout the war, not in the interests of Trade Unionism only, but in those of the wage-earning class, and of the community as a whole, by the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee (J. S. Middleton, Honorary Secretary), a body which included representatives not only of the Parliamentary Committee, Labour Party, and General Federation, but also of the Co-operative Union, the National Union of Teachers, and other organisations. The valuable though often unwelcome assistance which this Committee gave to the Government by insisting on the redress of grievances that officialdom would have ignored, and by its working out of policy and persistence in agitation on such matters as pensions, limitation of prices, food-rationing, rent restriction, and other subjects, on which its publications had marked results, deserve the attention of the historian.

[723] Subsequently Mr. J. R. Clynes (National Union of General Workers) was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Food; and on Lord Rhondda’s death he succeeded him as Minister of Food.

[724] See the printed reports of Labour Party Conferences and Trades Union Congresses, 1914-19.

[725] _Report of the Inter-Allied Socialist and Labour Conference_, February 15, 1915.

[726] Mr. Hodge succeeded to Mr. Barnes as Minister of Pensions, Mr. Roberts to Mr. Hodge as Minister of Labour, and Mr. G. J. Wardle (National Union of Railwaymen) to Mr. Roberts as Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade.

[727] _Memorandum on War Aims_ (Labour Party), February 1918.

[728] It is difficult not to be struck with the greater breadth of vision, the higher idealism, and (as we venture to say) the larger statesmanship of the Labour Party in its projects and proposals for the resettlement of the world after the Great War, compared with those which the statesmen and diplomatists of the capitalist parties of Great Britain, France, Italy, and, as we grieve to say, also the United States, with the acquiescence of deliberately inflamed popular electorates, succeeded in embodying in the Treaty of Peace. Apart from the indefensible redistributions of political sovereignty, not essentially differing in spirit from those of the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15 (and probably less stable even than these), against which Labour opinion had strongly protested in advance, it is impossible not to regret the failure to incorporate in the Treaty the proposals, for which the Labour Party had secured the support of the organised working-class opinion of the world, for (i.) the universal abandonment of discriminatory fiscal barriers to international trade; (ii.) the administration of Colonial possessions exclusively in the interest of the local inhabitants, and on the basis of equality of opportunity for traders of all nations; (iii.) concerted international control of the exportable surplus of materials and food-stuffs of all the several countries, so as to mitigate, as far as possible, in the general world-shortage which the Labour Party foresaw, the inevitable widespread starvation in the most necessitous areas, whether enemy, allied, or neutral; (iv.) deliberate Government action in each country for the prevention of unemployment, instead of letting it occur and then merely relieving the unemployed. In questions of foreign policy the Labour Party, inspired by its idealism, has shown itself at its best, instead of this department of politics being, as is often ignorantly assumed, altogether beyond its capacity.

[729] The new constitution and enlarged programme which the Labour Party adopted at its Conferences of 1917-18, after six months’ consideration and discussion by the constituent organisations, were little more than a ratification for general adoption of what had become the practice of particular districts. Thus, the more active Local Labour Parties, such as those of Woolwich and Blackburn, had long welcomed the adhesion of supporters who were not manual workers. The successive annual Conferences had passed resolutions which, taken together, amounted to a pretty complete programme of constructive legislation, wholly Collectivist in principle. 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; and they led to a considerable accession of membership, largely from the professional and middle classes, which was steadily increased as the unsatisfactory character of the Treaty of Peace, the continued “militarism” of the Government, and the aggression of a “Protectionist” capitalism became manifest.

[730] Messrs. Barnes, Roberts (who became Minister of Food), Parker, and Wardle.

[731] Mr. Henderson was re-elected to Parliament in 1919 at a bye-election, capturing a strong Conservative seat at Widnes (Lancashire).

[732] A “Joint Board”--from which the General Federation of Trade Unions was afterwards excluded--and, later on, joint meetings of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and the Executive Committee of the Labour Party, did something to remove friction.

[733] For the successive experiments in Co-operative Production by Associations of Producers the student is referred to _The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain_, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb) (1891); _Co-operative Production_, by Benjamin Jones (1894); and, for a more recent survey, the supplement to _The New Statesman_ of February 14, 1914, entitled “Co-operative Production and Profit Sharing.”

[734] See _Towards Social Democracy?_ by Sidney Webb (1916); and for recent surveys, the supplements to _The New Statesman_ of May 30, 1914, and May 8, 1915, entitled, respectively, “The Co-operative Movement” and “State and Municipal Enterprise.”

[735] For a recent survey of Professional Association in England and Wales--the only general study of it known to us--see the supplements to the _New Statesman_ of September 25 and October 2, 1915 (“English Teachers and their Professional Associations”), and April 21 and 28, 1917 (“Professional Associations”). The student will note the distinction between two types of associations among professional brain-workers, one having essentially Trade Union purposes, the other (which we distinguish as the Scientific Society) concerned only for the increase of knowledge.

[736] We add as an Appendix an extract from the concluding chapter of our _Industrial Democracy_, published in 1897, in which we dealt with this point.

[737] We do not discuss here all the difficulties inherent in the government of a large and populous community--such, for instance, as that of combining a large measure of local autonomy (which is what many people mean by freedom) with the necessary unity of national policy and central control (without which there would be gross inequality, internecine strife, and chaos). This difficulty has to be faced alike by Industrial Unionists, Gild Socialists, and the advocates of Democracy based on geographical constituencies. Nor have we mentioned the problems, in which the Trade Unions have their own wealth of experience, as to the relationship between elected representatives and their constituents; between representative assemblies and executive committees; and between executive committees and the official staff. These problems and difficulties (on which we have written in our _Industrial Democracy_) are common to all democratic systems of administration, whether based on constituencies of producers, consumers, or citizens. It seems to us that constituencies of producers present special difficulties of their own, such as (i.) that of defining the boundaries between industries or services, and (ii.) the problem, within an industry or a service, of how to provide for the representation of numerically unequal distinct sections, groups, or grades, each with its own _technique_. The further we go in Democracy the more complicated it becomes, and the greater the need for knowledge.

[738] This is well put by an American economist. “The Trade Union programme, or rather the Trade Union programmes, for each Trade Union has a programme of its own, is not the unrelated economic demands and methods which it is usually conceived to be, but it is a closely integrated social philosophy and plan of action. In the case of most Union types the programme centres indeed about economic demands and methods, but it rests on the broad foundation of the conception of right, of rights, and of general theory peculiar to the workers; and it fans out to reflect all the economic, ethical, juridical, and social hopes and fears, aims, attitudes, and aspirations of the group. It expresses the workers’ social theory and the rules of the game to which they are committed, not only in industry but in social affairs generally. It is the organised workers’ conceptual world” (_Trade Unionism in the United States_, by R. F. Hoxie, p. 280).

APPENDICES