CHAPTER XVII

THE JUBILEE YEAR OF THE BRITISH TRADES UNION CONGRESS

IF an unsophisticated citizen of the United States had arrived in Derby on September 1, 1918, or thereabouts, he would have spent the first hours of his visit asking questions. He would have wanted to know why it was that, with paper at famine prices, leaflets were falling on delegates like "blessed rain from Heaven." He would have wanted to know why it was that the head of the Sailors' and Firemen's Union should erect a large marquee in the Market Square and invite all who cared to do so to take lunch with him without charge. He would have wanted to know what the prime minister of Australia was doing at this lunch (besides eating his share of it) and why, himself a labor leader, he should go out of his way to revile ideals which generations of working men in all countries had agreed to keep sacred.

He would have wanted to know why, if the leaders of British trades unionism thought it proper to boycott this lunch, veteran Samuel Gompers, whom, as representing the United States, everybody delighted to honor, thought it proper to be present at it. He might even have wanted to know who paid for the lunch, and whether the function of a brass band, which made much noise during the proceedings, was to conceal the paucity of applause called forth by the somewhat acidulous eloquence of Premier Hughes.

"It would not be possible to answer all the questions of such a visitor," wrote a British correspondent to The Survey, "but one might tell him in general terms that the trade union world was increasing its power and prestige by leaps and bounds; that it now numbered nearly five million adherents, including three-quarters of a million women, and that the inrush was continuing and quickening; that all but a few of these members would have votes under the Representation of the People Act, and that, in consequence, the political power of the unions would also be increased and might, in the future, be decisive; that this prospect was leading to many attempts to 'nobble' labor and would probably produce an epidemic of free lunches, at most of which the prime minister of Australia (who had become so devoted to the British Islands that he had apparently forgotten his own) might be expected to be present. As for Samuel

Gompers, one would say that after all he had not spoken as ferociously as our yellow press had led us to expect him to do; that doubtless he had failed as yet accurately to take his bearings and that when he had done so, his native acumen would probably lead him to select his luncheon parties with greater care.

"And with this prelude one would leave the visitor to enter the congress in the sure hope that with open eyes and ears he could not fail to arrive at just conclusions."

It is as little possible as it is desirable to refer to all the resolutions adopted by this fifth annual meeting in war-time of the British Trades Union Congress, this fiftieth since its founding. The address of the chairman and the subsequent debates gave chief place to questions we shall explore in this and succeeding chapters, such questions as the dispute on passports, the attempts to form a purely trade union political party, the antagonisms which threatened to separate the congress from the Labour Party on the one hand and from the General Federation of Trades Unions on the other, the question most of all of the war policy of British labor;-the relation to these questions of the American labor leadership.

If ever modesty, sincerity and disinterestedness spoke out of the mouth of a man it spoke out of the mouth of J. W. Ogden. Ogden is not a lion of the world of labor, but he is endeared to it by qualities of the head and the heart. Lancashire weavers, of whom he is one, are said to say little and think a lot. That certainly is Ogden's way. One feels in listening to him that he talks merely because he has something imperative to say. And again like the weavers, he abhors rhetoric or any type or degree of overemphasis or exaggeration. In his address to the congress appeared the candor and exactitude of his mind and the care, even the pains, with which he had worked his way to convictions.

Havelock Wilson and his colleagues have never loved the political Labour Party, and now, aided by Hughes and some scores of camp followers, they were seeking under various pretenses to disrupt it. Ogden, without mentioning them, sent a heavy censure in their direction. Experience had taught him that unless working men act together in politics they cannot act together successfully in industry.

On another subject, that of the struggle threatening to become bitter between craft and industrial unions, Ogden had something to say of interest to American labor organizers. Between the conflicting claims of these types of union, the Parliamentary Committee of the British Congress has some jurisdiction, but it is not enough to enable it to penetrate the tangle of overlapping federations, confederations and amalgamations and the interests and

jealousies that have grown up in these. The policy of President Ogden was one that might be derided if its author were less experienced, sober and shrewd-the proposal of one all-embracing trade union within which, with expert help, the wage-earners might place themselves in their natural logical groups.

But it was on the overhanging issues of war and peace that Ogden's speech was of most effect. That there was any weakening in the determination of the British democracy to attain the objects for which the nation entered the war, or any attempt (in dealing with the labor movement in enemy countries) to trespass on the functions of central government, he denied. The labor movement, however, had the power to render moral support to the armies that fight for democracy as it had the duty to assist mankind to achieve righteousness and peace. The "awful work" of the sword had been done for four years and was still to do. Labor could no longer be supine. Ogden stood, therefore, for conference while war was on between the several labor movements, not to negotiate a peace, which is a function of central government, but to exchange views, remove misunderstandings and perhaps show governments the way to reunite humanity over the chasm in which its youth and happiness had been rapidly perishing. "Godspeed to the International," cried Ogden, and the solemn audience all but echoed "Amen."

This weaver's speech, in which any one who desired to might find the heart of British labor laid bare, prepared the way for a discussion on peace in which the standing committee submitted a resolution. The resolution (page 264) reaffirmed the demand of the Blackpool congress twelve months earlier for an international conference, requested the labor parties of the Central Powers to table their answer to the war aims memorandum drawn seven months earlier by the Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference at London and called upon the government to open negotiations as soon as the enemy, voluntarily or by compulsion, evacuated France and Belgium. It lost nothing by being committed to J. H. Thomas. Americans are acquainted with his buoyant and virile personality. His present commanding place in labor politics is due as much to his insight and generalship as to his extraordinary energy and staying power. It owes a little also to the sense of fun which made him during the congress a thorn in the flesh of Havelock Wilson and the destroyer of most of that gentleman's platitudes. At a great open-air "pro-Ally demonstration," Thomas turned up in the audience, and, after Havelock Wilson had uttered his usual plea for a five years' boycott of Germany, went on to the platform ostensibly to support that proposition. Poor Wilson's face grew

longer as the speech of his supporter proceeded. At the end of the meeting when the crowd had forgotten the "boycott" and were cheering rapturously for a league of nations, it would have made an inimitable "Melancholia."

Later at the Congress when the boycott resolution did duty once again and Wilson buttressed it with a sweeping attack on internationalism and "peace by negotiation," Thomas made the hit of the week by reading a quotation from which it appeared that Wilson himself, at a conference of his union subsequent to the sinking of the Lusitania, had resisted "from an international point of view" substantially the very resolution that he was now intemperately supporting.

Moving the peace resolution, Thomas added to his successes in a speech of unusual dignity and power illumined by a declaration that British labor would not "sacrifice one life to add a yard to the territory of the empire" and by a demand that the Allies should state their terms once and for all so these would not change with the war map as did the terms of the Germans. Here again Wilson was an obscurantist, and though the resolution was in the nature of a compromise between the dominant groups in the congress, he struck at it viciously. His friends in other tussles, however, lightly abandoned him in this, and the resolution was adopted with practical unanimity. [See Chapter XXI.]

Peace was again the theme when a day later delegates from the United States and Canada and from the British Labour Party brought to the congress the fraternal greetings of their organizations. Samuel Gompers (the lunch forgotten) was naturally hero of this occasion and was given an ovation as a patriarch of labor, such as any leader might treasure. His speech, as well as his presence, was cheered. British democracy counts association with America as the biggest event not only of the war but of modern history, and Gompers could not too often refer to it. The Boer War and Home Rule are less easy themes, but on neither of them did the veteran speak too strongly for the taste of his audience. British labor does not equivocate either on Ireland or South Africa, and it would gladly concede to these peoples the right it is asserting for others.

Henderson, who followed Gompers, frankly admitted that the British and American labor organizations were not in accord on the proposed international labor conference. Their aims were, however, identical, and the difference in method might be minimized or removed at the forthcoming Allied Labour Conference in London. Henderson in resounding sentences came near to repeating his great triumph of twelve months before. He was stirring