Presie>ent White Library 
 Cornell University 
 
Cornell University Library 
 HDS393.B96 B95 
 
 John Burns : 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 030 096 899 
 
a Cornell University 
 y Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030096899 
 
JOHN BURNS 
 
JOSEPH BURGESS 
 
JOHN BURNS: 
 
 THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF A 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH BURGESS 
 
 Proprietor, The Operativey 1885-86; Editor, The Workman's TimeSf 1890-94 
 
 Author of "The I. L. P. : Its Origin and Early History" 
 "Reminiscences of a Socialist Agitator," &c. &c. 
 
 GLASGOW 
 
 THE REFORMERS' BOOKSTALL, LIMITED 
 
 126 BOTHWELL STREET 
 
 1911 
 
 All rights reserved 
 5 
 
To 
 
 WILLIAM MARTIN HADDOW 
 
 GLASGOW SCHOOL BOARD 
 
 "THE CHILDREN'S FRIEND" 
 
 AND 
 
 MY LEAL COMRADE 
 
II. M, llNNl'MNN 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 My old friend Joseph Burgess has asked me to write 
 a few words by way of introduction to his survey 
 of John Burns's career. I gladly do this ; for al- 
 though Burgess and myself have not always been 
 agreed as to what should be done to advance our 
 movement, and quite possibly we may regard the 
 present situation from different points of view, 
 there is certainly no man who has served the cause 
 more honestly or has done more unseen and un- 
 remunerative work for the Independent Labour 
 Party, and the Labour Party which has grown out 
 of it, than Burgess himself. In fact many of those 
 who now take credit, to themselves for having 
 organised and led those combinations really owe 
 their positions to Joseph Burgess and Robert 
 Blatchford. 
 
 I am bound to say, however, that I should not 
 myself have considered it worth the while of 
 Burgess to publish a detailed account of the dis- 
 creditable doings of the President of the Local 
 Government Board. The record of a turncoat 
 from his class, who has done all he can in office 
 to thwart any improvement being made in the con- 
 dition of those whose cause he formerly pretended 
 to champion, is not very pleasant to read. It only 
 shows what we long ago knew, that in all class 
 
viii FOREWORD 
 
 struggles treachery to the workers pays the traitor 
 well. 
 
 I am not, of course, in any way responsible for 
 Burgess's accuracy in his statements of what took 
 place. He throughout, in my opinion, greatly 
 exaggerates the influence which Burns had in the 
 Social Democratic Federation. We all regarded 
 him as a valuable flag-waver and stump-orator, but 
 in Council and in Committee he was absolutely 
 useless, and I do not remember a single occasion 
 during the years he was with us when John Burns 
 made a suggestion of any importance. Aloreover, 
 he was under great obligations to those who edu- 
 cated him and wrote his speeches and articles for 
 him. When he first came among us, early in 1884, 
 Burns was as ignorant and as rough a specimen of 
 the English working man as I have ever en- 
 countered. Some of us soon saw that he had 
 qualities which would make him of great use to our 
 movement, then, as always, in need of powerful 
 speakers and active propagandists. It is all to 
 Burns's credit that he took full advantage of the 
 opportunities offered to him ; but it is a little 
 amusing to read the eulogy on Burns's speech at the 
 Old Bailey, when as a matter of fact Champion and 
 I wrote that speech for him. 
 
 His colossal conceit was always in evidence. I 
 remember quite early in our acquaintance he sent 
 me an article for Justice which was absolutely 
 unreadable. I corrected its defects of grammar, 
 divided the interminable sentences, and made it, 
 I think, a pretty good article. The next time I met 
 Burns he said, "if it had been anybody but you, 
 
FOREWORD ix 
 
 Hyndman, who had slaughtered my article in that 
 way I would have broken his head!" Similarly, 
 when Burns was quite unknown, standing with me 
 on the platform at Nottingham, I allowed him to 
 speak first, taking my chance of dealing with the 
 audience after he had finished. I had not been 
 speaking ten minutes when Burns, who sat behind 
 me, tugged my coat and asked me to sit down. 
 These things, of course, were very laughable at the 
 time and are still more laughable now. I only cite 
 them as evidences of the amazingly good opinion 
 which Burns had of himself even in those early 
 days. 
 
 I should be the last man, however, to deny that 
 for four or five years Burns did very useful work 
 for Socialism in this country. He was, I think, on 
 the whole the best stump-orator I ever heard. 
 Though not possessed of the argumentative power 
 which gave Charles Bradlaugh his great influence 
 over his audiences. Burns had a better voice, a 
 more taking figure, and, to use Lord Beaconsfield's 
 phrase, " no scruples whatsoever to restrain him." 
 Gifted, therefore, with a jovial appearance and sub- 
 lime self-confidence, he was of the greatest service 
 at our unemployed meetings in Trafalgar Square 
 and elsewhere; not even Tom Mann being quite 
 his equal in this department, though much more 
 valuable as an organiser and for all unseen 
 work. 
 
 Burns's efforts during the Dock strike, which he 
 had a large share in bringing about prematurely, 
 were really extraordinary and quite equal to any- 
 thing that was done by others who were less in the 
 
X FOREWORD 
 
 public eye. Though not long after this he drifted 
 off into the Liberal camp and entered upon the 
 series of arrangements with the Liberals which 
 have placed him in the Cabinet, he nevertheless 
 fought fine fights at Battersea, first for the County 
 Council and then for his seat in Parliament. It is 
 sad to think now of those enthusiastic working-class 
 Socialists who, believing fully in Burns's honesty 
 and ability, used to sit up night after night first to 
 paste up his bills and then to watch out of bed till 
 daylight in order to see that his then enemies and 
 present friends did not tear them down. Many of 
 these men have never recovered from the shock of 
 his selling out. 
 
 When Burns had become a regular member of 
 the Capitalist Liberal Party his doings lost all 
 interest for me, except in so far as they tended to 
 discourage the people who had believed in him and 
 had worked for him. Strange to say, it was quite 
 useless for us of the S.D.F. and of Justice to 
 warn the workers against him at this time. Even 
 men who ought to have known better were not 
 ashamed to attribute our criticism and denunciation 
 of Burns to jealousy. Even so lately as 1906, when 
 he entered the Liberal Cabinet and became a 
 servile courtier, there were still some who imagined 
 that Burns was honest. 
 
 His career at the Local Government Board has 
 now opened the eyes of the most credulous, and 
 we can all see that from the very first — as he once 
 hinted to Quelch — his sole object was to sit with 
 a red box in front of him on the Treasury Bench. 
 That he should have achieved this position by 
 
FOREWORD xi 
 
 turning round upon his principles and betraying all 
 the men who had enabled him to make a successful 
 trade of the education and reputation he had ac- 
 quired at their expense might be forgiven, or at 
 any rate forgotten. But that he should have used 
 and should be using to-day his official position and 
 influence as head of the Administration of the 
 Poor Law in this country to injure the unemployed 
 and harass the miserable in every way he possibly 
 can, is conduct which is quite unpardonable and 
 approaches in infamy the misdeeds of the miscreant 
 Azeff himself. 
 
 H. M. HYNDMAN. 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 It was no part of my original intention to write a 
 preface to this book, but to let it, with only such 
 introduction as would be furnished by Mr. Hynd- 
 man in his "Foreword," speak for itself. But, 
 since reading Mr. Hyndman's introduction, it has 
 suggested itself to me that it were wise to explain 
 the motives which impelled me to write the book 
 itself. It is not because of any pleasure in the job. 
 What Hyndman says about Burns's egotism 
 I can corroborate. Hyndman refers to a coat- 
 pulling incident of which he was the victim. I 
 remember seeing, from my seat at the press table 
 at the Cardiff Trades Congress, Burns puUing the 
 coat-tails of an American fraternal delegate. This 
 was the first time fraternal delegates from America 
 had attended the British Trades Union Congress. 
 They had travelled more than three thousand miles 
 to deliver their message. But Burns could not abide 
 to hear it out. The first delegate was not on his 
 feet more than ten minutes before Burns tugged at 
 him to sit down. I once discussed this habit of 
 Burns with Will Crooks, when he told me he never 
 by any chance sat next to Burns on a platform. 
 " I always," Crooks said, " note where Burns is 
 sitting, and then get as far away frqm him as 
 
xiv AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 possible." This impatience and jealousy accounts 
 for much in Burns's career. 
 
 Another pertinent sidelight on character is shown 
 by Hyndman in the passage where he refers to 
 Burns's sterility in Council. Indeed, I question 
 whether in the whole of his voluminous utterances 
 on Labour or Socialist problems a single original 
 idea can be fathered on Burns. Nor is he 
 tenacious in holding to ideas he adopts at second- 
 hand. The first time this struck me was so far 
 back as 1891, during a casual conversation in the 
 Chancery Lane Democratic Club. Burns on that 
 occasion offered some critical observations on the 
 conduct of the Parisian police which I considered 
 inconsistent. I told him so rather sharply. Soon 
 afterwards, in the same conversation, he gave 
 utterance to views diametrically opposed to those 
 that had excited my dissent. The truth seems to 
 be that Burns lacks initiative. First the Social 
 Democrats, as described by Hyndman, used Burns 
 as a sort of giant gramophone. When he became 
 a member of the Trades Union Congress Parlia- 
 mentary Committee, James Mawdsley notoriously 
 employed him to shoot the bullets he had moulded 
 in the form of new standing orders. True, that 
 gave Burns an opportunity to score off Keir Hardie, 
 and he did not mind committing hari-kari to do it. 
 This defect explains Burns's patent subserviency 
 to the bureaucrats at the L.G.B. The permanent 
 officials with whom he now works soon discovered 
 his weakness, and Burns is as pliable putty in their 
 hands. 
 
 Knowing all this, and recognising as one is forced 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE xv 
 
 to do that, in these days, a kind of legendary 
 Burns is being built up by those who applaud his 
 present policy, it occurred to me that if I could 
 paint Burns as he really was in the successive 
 stages of his evolution, and for the pigments I 
 have relied solely on his own professions and pro- 
 testations, using in every case either his own words 
 as publicly recorded or as spoken to me personally, 
 I would not only be laying bare the real motives 
 that converted the Republican Man with the Red 
 Flag of twenty-five years ago into the accomplished 
 courtier of to-day and the one-time blatant propagan- 
 dist of revolutionary Socialism into the reactionary 
 bureaucrat who opposes every instalment of pallia- 
 tive collectivism — I felt, I say, that I would not only 
 do this, and thus render a service to historical 
 accuracy, but might be able, incidentally, to point 
 a valuable moral for the future. 
 
 The latter is the main motive underlying this 
 book, and I claim that the record shows indisputably 
 that Burns did aspire to lead a Labour Party that 
 would look up to him as its pontiff, and when he 
 discovered that the Labour Party had developed a 
 mind of its own, and preferred to listen to other 
 advisers, then, in his chagrin, unable to bear a 
 rival or rivals near his throne, he advertised by 
 his conduct in Parliament that he was ready to 
 take the Liberal shilling and to do his utmost to 
 defeat the movement which had denied him the 
 opportunity of domination. All this is, I believe, 
 made clear in ray book, and, I now add that if the 
 determined hostility originally evinced by Burns 
 to the Labour Party in the House of Commons 
 
 b 
 
xvi AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 has been modified in expression, it is because it 
 eventually dawned on his superiors in the Cabinet, 
 that every antagonistic demonstration made by 
 Burns simply strengthened the Labour Party in the 
 House and in the country, which induced them to 
 adopt a more insidious and more dangerous policy 
 — the policy against which my moral is directed. 
 That moral is not elaborated in this book ; indeed 
 it is only hinted at in the closing paragraph, mainly 
 because it is intended some day to work it out in 
 a sequel, but I will state it more fully here. 
 
 The Labour Party, so it seems to me, is in peril 
 of sinning collectively in the same way that Burns 
 sinned individually. I do not believe any of its 
 present Socialist leaders are ambitious to follow 
 Burns into the bondage of office, but I do feel there 
 is a danger that, despite their Socialism, the Labour 
 Party may become purely a reforming party, living 
 from hand to mouth on palliatives. In its legis- 
 lative capacity it is too like the left wing of the 
 Radical Party. Indeed, with some half-dozen ex- 
 ceptions, one could select from amongst the Radicals 
 forty men more advanced than the ruck of the 
 Labour Party. This has got to be altered. Either 
 the Socialist members of the Labour Party must 
 bring their colleagues forward, or they must them- 
 selves form an advanced group with the liberty, 
 which they do not now enjoy, to ventilate their 
 Socialist views in the House of Commons. Unless 
 one or the other of these alternatives be chosen the 
 Labour Party may follow John Burns into the 
 maw of all-devouring Liberalism. Whereupon will 
 ensue sterility, as in his sad case. 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE xvii 
 
 For the final condemnation of Burns will not 
 really be that he set himself to side-track Labourism 
 into the camp of Liberalism. True, Burns does 
 deserve condemnation for that phase of his de- 
 velopment, and history will, I am sure, censure 
 him for deserting Labour at such a crisis in its 
 fortunes to play the game of those whose aim 
 always has been to make abortive every attempt 
 to organise a really Independent Labour Party. 
 But his uncondoned condemnation will be that all 
 the high hopes he professed to cherish when he 
 took office were blasted, because he fell into the 
 hands of the permanent officials, the bureaucrats 
 who proved cleverer and more persistent than 
 himself, and that consequently he developed into 
 the most reactionary President of the Local Govern- 
 ment Board in our history, so reactionary, indeed, 
 that he earned the praises of Mr. Walter Long for 
 carrying through policies that that Tory ex-President 
 of the Local Government Board would never have 
 dared to attempt. The Labour Party does not 
 intend to reduce itself to a similar absurdity of 
 futility. Neither did Burns. Doubtless he pro- 
 posed to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm, 
 and the Labour M.P.'s mean to do great things. 
 But they will never begin to do them by subordi- 
 nating their Socialism. Their real work is not con- 
 structive statesmanship but persistent propaganda 
 ■ — the preaching of the ideal, in Parliament as 
 well as out, the constant presentation to the public 
 of what is desirable to be accomphshed. Their 
 mission is educative. When public opinion has 
 been sufficiently permeated by Socialist principles 
 
xviii AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 the practical statesmen will find a way to carry out 
 the mandate given. 
 
 It is because I grieve that John Burns fell from 
 his high estate as an Agitator, and because I fear 
 the Labour M.P.'s may make the same error, that 
 this book has come into being. I am conscious 
 that I have not realised all I desired to do, but 
 if I have warned the Parliamentary Labour Party 
 to avoid the slippery slopes of Avernus the effort 
 made, even with all its imperfections, will not 
 have been altogether in vain. 
 
 JOSEPH BURGESS. 
 April 191 1. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAr. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY ...... I 
 
 II. JOHN BURNS IN 1885 7 
 
 III. HENRY HYDE CHAMPION . . . .13 
 
 IV. THE SOCIALIST MILLIONAIRE — BURNS DEFIES 
 
 THE LIBERALS ig 
 
 V. OUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON : WE 
 
 MEET BURNS IN HYDE PARK . . -25 
 
 VI. WE ARE INTRODUCED TO THE DEMOCRATS . 3 1 
 
 VII. A "house" dinner AT THE DEMOCRATIC . 38 
 
 VIII. FAIR TRADE IN THE EIGHTIES ... 45 
 
 IX. BURNS'S SPEECHES IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE . 5 1 
 
 X. THE RIOTS IN THE WEST END . . -57 
 
 XI. I INTERVIEW HYNDMAN AND CHAMPION . 63 
 
 XII. THE DEPUTATION TO MR. CHAMBERLAIN . 69 
 
 XIII. HYNDMAN IN DIPLOMATIC AND BURNS IN 
 
 DEFIANT MOOD 74 
 
 XIV. BURNS'S SPEECH AT THE OLD BAILEY . . 80 
 XV. MR. AND MRS. BURNS AT HOME, 1 886 . . 86 
 
 XVI. WHY CHAMPION LEFT THE S.D.F. LORD 
 
 mayor's DAY, 1886 92 
 
 XVII. " BLOODY SUNDAY " BURNS AND CUNNING- 
 
 HAME GRAHAM, M.P., SENT TO PRISON . 98 
 XVIII. champion's MASTERFUL POLICY IN 1888 — 
 
 THE GENESIS OF THE DOCK STRIKE . . I04 
 
XX CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XIX. BURNS AND THE DOCKERS ... I09 
 
 XX. BURNS AND THE DUNDEE BY-ELECTION, 1 889 1 16 
 
 XXI. THE PYSCHOLOGY OF JOHN BURNS . .124 
 
 XXII. THE DEBUT OF KEIR HARDIE . . . I30 
 
 XXIII. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM DISILLUSION WITH 
 
 LIBERALISM CHAMPION'S " NINETEENTH 
 
 century" ARTICLE . . . . -137 
 
 XXIV. I AGAIN BECOME A LABOUR EDITOR . . 145 
 XXV. KEIR HARDIE IN PARLIAMENT . . -152 
 
 XXVI. BURNS AND HARDIE AT CROSS PURPOSES . 158 
 
 XXVII. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS IN BATTERSEA . 164 
 XXVIII. BURNS INVEIGHS AGAINST " BOGUS " LABOUR 
 
 PARTIES 170 
 
 XXIX. BURNS AND THE S.D.F. IN 1 894 — HYNDMAN'S 
 
 IMPEACHMENT 1 76 
 
 XXX. BURNS ON HIS DEFENCE . . . .184 
 
 XXXI. BURNS'S DENUNCIATION OF THE I.L.P. HIS 
 
 "choice DERANGEMENT OF EPITAPHS" . I9I 
 
 XXXII. JACK IN OFFICE I96 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Joseph Burgess . . . . 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 H. M. Hyndman . . . . 
 
 . To face p. vii 
 
 John Burns (as in 1885) 
 
 7 
 
 Henry Hyde Champion 
 
 13 
 
 Mrs. Joseph Burgess 
 
 86 
 
 J. Keir Hardie . . . . 
 
 130 
 
 R. B. Cunninghame Graham 
 
 137 
 
 Burns in Court Dress . 
 
 „ 196 
 
" The Publishers wish to express their indebted^ 
 ness for tlie loan of blocks, photos, prints, to: — 
 Mr. f. Keir Hardie, M.P., Mr. Tom Mann (for 
 Mr. Champion's photo). The Twentieth Century Press, 
 and the Editor of 'fohn Bull.' Mr. R. B. Cunninghame 
 Grahanis Photo is taken from a negative belonging 
 to Afcssrs. T. 6^ R. Annan &• Sons, Glasgow. The 
 Portrait is the Property of the Glasgow Corporation. 
 Also to the Editor of ' Forward^ Glasgow, in whose 
 columns the story appeared in serial form, for waiving 
 his priority of right to book publication." 
 
JOHN BURNS 
 
 HIS RISE AND PROGRESS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Now that the General Election of 1935 has resulted 
 in the return of 370 Socialist Members of Parlia- 
 ment, giving a clear majority of 70 over all the 
 groups forming the Capitalist Combination, it has 
 occurred to me that the time is propitious to put 
 on record the early and inner history of the age- 
 long evolution of the Socialist Party. 
 
 Its continually increasing strength has been chro- 
 nicled by contemporary annalists. You may tabu- 
 late the dry-as-dust statistics from the Year Books. 
 They will tell you how, at the General Election of 
 1906, the Labour Party, from which the Socialist 
 Party evolved, made a dramatic debut, 30 mem- 
 bers strong, in the Parliamentary arena. How, at 
 the General Election of 1910, its strength was 
 increased to 40 votes by the adhesion of the 
 Miners' Federation M.P.'s, previously classified 
 as Liberals. And you may discover, if you pay 
 particular attention to the footnotes, that the 
 nominal gain really represented a net loss of five 
 members. 
 
 But the Year Books will not explain, nor can 
 
 A 
 
2 JOHN BURNS 
 
 you find the explanation in any contemporary 
 record, how it came to pass that (taking advan- 
 tage of the granting of Payment of Members and 
 Official Election Expenses at the second General 
 Election of 1910) by the General Election of 
 1919, the Labour Party had been transmuted 
 into a Socialist Party ; nor why, since the moment 
 that clear line of demarcation between the Unified 
 Socialists and the then orthodox political parties 
 was drawn, the British Socialist Party has enjoyed 
 an uninterrupted career of success. 
 
 You will not learn about that in the Year Books, 
 but if you care to study this veracious account of 
 the inner history of the British Labour movement 
 from 1885 to 1905, and its sequel, which will de- 
 scribe the Socialist evolution from 1905 to 1935, 
 you will obtain the information. 
 
 Socialists did not come into their own until 1920, 
 when, for the first time an avowed Socialist Party 
 appeared in Parliament ; but twenty-five years 
 earlier, in 1885, the Social Democratic Federation, 
 the original British Socialist organisation, nomi- 
 nated John Burns in West Nottingham. At that 
 time I was in my twenty-fifth year. 
 
 During the whole of the fifty years since I have 
 been intimately associated with the Labour and 
 Socialist movement. Not that I figured as a leader. 
 I was never in the limelight, but it was my duty, 
 if the figure of speech be permissible, to direct the 
 rays of the lantern of publicity on the succession 
 of men and women who did, for longer or shorter 
 periods, occupy the centre of the stage. To be 
 plain, I have been associated with the movement 
 in the capacity of a journalist. And now that 
 the Socialist Party is dominant in Parliament, 
 and in a position to begin the building of the 
 edifice of the Socialist State, I feel that it is 
 incumbent upon me to tell the story of the half- 
 
INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 century during which its foundations were labori- 
 ously laid. So much, at least, is due from me 
 to posterity, and it is my sincerest desire that I 
 may be spared until I have done that work. 
 
 It was in Nottingham that I first became asso- 
 ciated with Labour and Socialist journalism. For 
 some years, after a boyhood spent in the lace 
 factories, I had held a position on a local evening 
 paper. It was in financial difficulties all the time ; 
 its staff was but a make-shift — which may account 
 for my rapid promotion to the sub-editorship, and, 
 ultimately, the paper had to be sold. 
 
 Fortunately for me there was, just then, a 
 Nottingham lace manufacturer itching to become 
 a newspaper proprietor. After a somewhat loose 
 life, this gentleman became fanatically religious. 
 He was a great admirer of the Rev. T. De Witt 
 Talmage, of Brooklyn, and had been paying a 
 subsidy to a local weekly for the privilege of pub- 
 lishing a Talmage sermon every Saturday. It 
 occurred to him that, as the evening paper was 
 going cheap, he might utilise it as a daily pulpit. 
 Anyhow, he bought it, lock, stock, and barrel, 
 and converted it into what he regarded as a model 
 paper. He refused to allow racing quotations. 
 Brewers' advertisements were rejected. The theatres 
 got no notices. To crown all, there was the daily 
 column of sermon ! 
 
 Naturally, not even the abounding cash balance 
 of a rich owner could long sustain such an abor- 
 tion of a newspaper. But he was, in his own way, 
 a bit of a sportsman. He did not like to own he 
 was beaten, and for two years he stood the finan- 
 cial drain. Those years were, on the whole, good 
 years for me. I was promoted to the editorship, 
 got married on my increased salary, and was able 
 to save a few pounds against the time when the 
 inevitable crash came. Then I got orders to put 
 
4 JOHN BURNS 
 
 up the shutters, and, with a quarter's salary in lieu 
 of notice, found myself out of a situation. 
 
 In these circumstances, the wife and I deter- 
 mined to make an effort to establish a weekly 
 Labour paper. I undertook to be, all in my 
 own person, manager, advertisement canvasser, 
 reporter, and editor. She had had experience in 
 the office of the defunct evening paper, where I 
 first became acquainted with her, and was quite 
 certain she could keep the books and collect the 
 accounts, and that we could jointly see the paper 
 published. As for the printing, that might be 
 jobbed. It all seemed simple — and so it was, 
 though in another sense ; and on these lines we 
 began to issue The Nottingham Operative, the first 
 Labour paper published in the Provinces. 
 
 I am not writing a history of that ill-fated enter- 
 prise ; I am merely explaining how I became 
 associated with John Burns. Suffice it to say, 
 so far as the Operative is concerned, that in 
 four months my giddy career as a newspaper 
 proprietor began and ended. Those four months, 
 however, covered the period of the General Elec- 
 tion of 1885,- and, in a sense, it was the General 
 Election that tempted me into the speculation. 
 
 The General Election of 1885, you may remem- 
 ber, was the first after the Franchise had been 
 extended to householders in counties. Since 1869, 
 the year after the Franchise was conferred on 
 householders in boroughs, there had been talk 
 about Labour representation. The Trades Con- 
 gress of 1869, meeting in Birmingham, passed a 
 resolution in favour of the direct representation 
 of the Trade Unions in Parliament. In 1871 
 Mr. Gladstone tried to placate the Unions by 
 recognising their status in law, but this step had 
 been so bitterly opposed by the Manchester School 
 of Liberal politicians that in 1874 the Labour 
 
INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 Representation League, formed by the Trades Con- 
 gress, nominated fourteen candidates for Parlia- 
 ment. Of these, two, Thomas Burt and Alexander 
 Macdonald were successful. In 1880 they were 
 joined by Henry Broadhurst. And now, in 1885, 
 quite a number of Labour candidates were seeking 
 to enter Parliament. True, all these Labour candi- 
 dates were Liberals, or, as it became the fashion 
 to term them later on, " Lib.-Labs." Still, the fact 
 that so many working men contested seats at the 
 General Election of 1885 will testify to the feel- 
 ing of unrest that was abroad at the time I was 
 projecting The Nottingham Operative. 
 
 Moreover, what was relevant to my enterprise 
 locally, there was to be something more revolu- 
 tionary than a Labour candidate in Nottingham. 
 The Nottingham Branch of the Social Democratic 
 Federation announced that it intended to nominate 
 John Burns, of Battersea, as a candidate for the 
 West Division, and it was this that proved the 
 deciding factor in persuading me to publish The 
 Nottingham Operative. I argued that the excite- 
 ment of the Parliamentary contest would provide 
 me with a good opportunity to float the paper — 
 as the Liberal and Tory papers would probably 
 boycott Burns's meetings, and leave me the field 
 to exploit. And so I launched my little craft. 
 
 I was the more encouraged to do this because 
 I knew that Burns would make things lively in 
 Nottingham. Some months before, while I was 
 editing the evening paper, I had been struck by 
 a speech he delivered during the sittings of the 
 Nottingham Triennial Conference of the A.S.E. 
 I had thought so much of this speech that I 
 gave it a column of space, much to the disgust 
 of my proprietor, who declared that he had not 
 bought the paper to make a pulpit for revolutionary 
 Socialism. The fact is, I was becoming infected with 
 
6 JOHN BURNS 
 
 Socialism myself. I seldom missed an opportunity 
 of hearing the Socialist speakers brought down by 
 the Nottingham S.D.F., and was, as you may 
 see, quite ripe for such a mad enterprise as that 
 on which I entered. 
 
 But perhaps it was not such a mad enterprise 
 after all. True, it caused me for many years to 
 have to struggle against harassing poverty, but 
 what guarantee have I that any other course would 
 have served me better ? Certainly, none would 
 have fitted me so well for the work I am now 
 doing. 
 
 Anyhow, be that as it may, the speculation, wise 
 or otherwise, left me with a file of the Operative 
 in my possession, and from its columns I am 
 enabled to reconstitute a picture of John Burns 
 in 1885 — what he was like, and what were the 
 views he advocated. 
 
JOHN nURNS (;is in 1885) 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 JOHN BURNS IN 1885 
 
 My first issue of the Operative after the Dissolu- 
 tion of Pariiament was announced, was a " Burns " 
 number, with a portrait. I turn up the paper 
 containing that portrait, and this is what I see. 
 
 A young man — he was only twenty-seven at the 
 time — strongly built, leaning negligently on a photo- 
 grapher's escritoire. In his right hand he holds, so 
 that the title may be read, a copy of Justice, the 
 organ of the Social Democratic Federation. His 
 left hand, with the fist gripped, rests on his hip. 
 He is dressed plainly, but has not yet assumed the 
 reefer jacket that became his daily wear later on. 
 
 He is distinctly good-looking. Indeed, then and 
 always, Burns was inordinately proud of his face 
 and figure. He frequently alluded to his physical 
 advantages as an excuse for lack of modesty. In 
 Battersea, he said, modesty was only necessary 
 for those who had no beauty. 
 
 In this portrait Burns's hair is still raven black, 
 and his beard and moustache, as always, hide the 
 lower face and mouth. The upper features are 
 good. The forehead is broad and ample. Black 
 and full eyebrows shade deeply set eyes. The 
 nose is adequate. Altogether, the picture is a 
 striking one, and gives the impression of a man 
 who might be trusted to go far. 
 
 And already, at twenty-seven years of age. Burns 
 had shown that he intended to make a mark on 
 
8 JOHN BURNS 
 
 the world. While still an engineer's apprentice, 
 he had suffered arrest for defending free speech 
 on Clapham Common. Those were the days of 
 his association with the Temperance movement. 
 As soon as he was out of his time he had gone 
 to Africa for a year, working on the River Niger. 
 On the journey home he made a Continental tour. 
 On settling down in Battersea, he soon became 
 known in connection with most of the public move- 
 ments of the day, lecturing frequently in most of 
 the workmen's clubs. He was one of the founders 
 of the Metropolitan Radical Federation, sat on 
 the Committee of the Land Restoration League, 
 was elected a Vice-President of the Scottish Land 
 Restoration League, and became a member of the 
 Workmen's Peace Society Council and moved an 
 amendment to the resolution demanding war with 
 Russia at the " Jingo " meeting held at Hyde Park. 
 He also took an active part in the agitation for the 
 protection of young girls, which followed upon 
 Stead's Maiden Tribute exposures, and spoke at the 
 great Hyde Park demonstration. These activities 
 were in addition to his work for the A.S.E., and 
 preliminary to his membership of the S.D.F., on 
 the Executive of which he was sitting at the time 
 he contested Nottingham in 1885. 
 
 After stating these facts about Burns's public 
 work, I went on to quote, to show the kind of man 
 he was, from his speeches and articles in Justice. 
 
 The first notice I was able to find of Burns there 
 was of his presence as a delegate of the Social 
 Democratic Federation, at a meeting in favour of 
 assisted emigration, held in the Kennington Vestry 
 Hall, and reported va. Justice for sth July 1884. At 
 this meeting Burns told the peers and parsons on 
 the platform that the real reason why they wanted 
 to ship off the people was because they were afraid 
 of the Social Revolution in this country. 
 
JOHN BURNS IN 1885 9 
 
 The next issue of Justice contained an article on 
 "Our Mining Population," written by Burns. In 
 this article Burns described the conditions under 
 which miners worked, and concluded as follows : — 
 
 "Their individuality is completely crushed out, and 
 they have become, as Shelley says, but ' mechanised 
 automata,' simply profit-making machines to build 
 up large fortunes for the mine-owner, who, whilst 
 his men are working under such brutal conditions, 
 is luxuriating on the shores of the Mediterranean, 
 or gliding up the Bosphorus in a steam yacht, pur- 
 chased out of the unpaid labour of the miners." 
 
 In the issue of Justice of 13th September, 1884, 
 Burns wrote on "The Trades Union Congress" 
 as follows : — 
 
 "The Congress has been patted upon the back 
 often enough for its moderation by Tory and 
 Liberal. This, from a worker's point of view, is 
 a sure sign of its impotence and general inability 
 to cope with the difficulties that are daily brought 
 about by the profit-mongering system of to-day, 
 which both parties are desirous of perpetuating 
 in their own interests, but to the disadvantage of 
 those who toil. The Congress should measure its 
 duty to the workers, not by the compliments be- 
 stowed on its decisions by landlords and capitalists, 
 but, on the contrary, by the amount of disappro- 
 bation that their resolutions receive from their 
 worst enemies — those who rob the labourers on 
 the land, in the mines and factories. 
 
 "All this must be expected in the future if the 
 social conditions of the people are to be deter- 
 mined and regulated by a wealthy few who have 
 ' nobbled ' the press, who make the laws and own 
 the lawyers, who control Parliament, hold the reins 
 of Government, and thus keep the property they 
 have stolen from their poorer brethren. In any 
 country where there is absolute political equality, 
 
10 JOHN BURNS 
 
 unaccompanied by the collective ownership of 
 those factors of a really civilised national existence 
 — the land, banks, railways, mines, and other 
 productive and distributive agents — poverty will 
 ever be rampant. To make men politically free, 
 you must first make them socially independent. 
 Tory and Liberal alike have had their day ; it is 
 now time that the labourers asserted their rights 
 and insisted upon them." 
 
 My next quotation was from "An Open Letter 
 to Trade Unionists," which appeared, signed, 
 "John Burns," in Justice for 24th January, 1885. 
 In this letter Burns sketched the position of Trade 
 Unionism. 
 
 "Never," he said, "in the history of Unionism 
 were its prospects so gloomy as now. The old 
 methods of persecution and intimidation have 
 been revived in the most subtle forms ; men, 
 under fear of dismissal (which now means starva- 
 tion) are compelled to sever their connection with 
 their Unions. Whole societies have been crushed 
 out through their inability to stand against the 
 drain on their limited resources, whilst the larger 
 Unions, whose members are heavily levied, are 
 suffering severely through the same cause. . . . The 
 remedy is not to be found in smooth words or 
 plausible transitory panaceas from the owning 
 class. It can only be secured by the workers de- 
 manding their full share of the wealth they pro- 
 duce, and insisting upon their right to live like men, 
 and be citizens of an industrial commonwealth." 
 
 I clenched these quotations from Burns's articles 
 and speeches by telling the story of how he was 
 victimised for attending the Industrial Remunera- 
 tion Conference, held at the Princes Hall, London, 
 on the 28th, 29th and 30th January, 1885. That 
 Conference had been convened to consider the 
 following reference : — 
 
JOHN BURNS IN 1885 ii 
 
 "What are the best means, consistent with 
 justice and equity, for bringing about a more 
 equal division of the daily products of industry 
 between Capital and Labour, so that it may be- 
 come possible for all to enjoy a fair share of 
 material comfort and intellectual culture, possible 
 for all to lead a dignified life, and less difficult 
 for all to lead a good life." 
 
 Burns, Jack Williams, and James Macdonald 
 were delegates of the Social Democratic Federation 
 to that Conference, and on the third day, in the 
 course of a speech, Burns made the following 
 statement : — 
 
 "As workers they had been told there was 
 freedom to-day. He was sorry to say that the 
 fact of his coming to that Conference as a delegate 
 for the Social Democratic Federation had secured 
 his dismissal from the factory in which he had 
 worked. ('Shame.') Where was the freedom in 
 that ? Was not that slavery ? The remedy, the 
 Socialist contended, was not only the nationalisa- 
 tion of land, capital, and credit, but proper means 
 of production, distribution, and exchange, and thus 
 stop the robbery which they were subject to. 
 Would they combine with the proletariat of Europe 
 who had embraced Socialistic principles, or take 
 the side of might against right ? They would 
 soon have to answer thit question. A revolution 
 was germinating in the bowels of society through 
 the inequalities of condition which prevailed. To 
 the middle class he would say — Will you guide 
 this revolution, or be driven by it, or try to 
 suppress it by force ? If you do the latter, upon 
 you rests the responsibility for the strife that is 
 coming — the responsibility of pushing back the 
 hopes and aspirations of the workmen of the 
 world." 
 
 These quotations served to introduce Burns's 
 
11. 11, CHAMPION' 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 HENRY HYDE CHAMPION 
 
 Mr, Henry Hyde Champion was one of the men 
 who played an important part in the early develop- 
 ments of the Labour and Socialist movements in 
 this country to whom Fortune was far from kind. 
 Even now, fifty years after the events I am nar- 
 rating, John Burns and Keir Hardie are household 
 names. But the man who introduced both Burns 
 and Hardie to political life, in which they made 
 such astounding successes, was H. H. Champion, 
 and his name, I fear, has no significance to the men 
 and women of this generation, and is but a memory 
 to. those of mine. 
 
 But Champion had not only the honour to be 
 godfather, politically, to the two earliest Tribunes 
 of the Socialist movement, but was one of those 
 who carried the seeds of Socialism to Australia, 
 In 1894 he settled down in Melbourne, driven from 
 England partly by ill-health, partly by ill-fortune in 
 the enterprises it is my duty to describe. In 1910, 
 sixteen years later, a Labour Administration came 
 into power in the Commonwealth ; in 1920 the 
 Labour Government became avowedly a Socialist 
 Government, and its experience and success had 
 mixch to do with bringing about similar develop- 
 ments here. It is only due to Champion to say that 
 he was one of the main factors that brought into 
 existence, first, the Australian Labour Party, second, 
 the Australian Socialist Party. 
 
 '3 
 
14 JOHN BURNS 
 
 But of course all this was in the future on that 
 day in 1885 when Burns brought Champion into 
 my office. All that I knew of him then was that he 
 was the son of a Major-General, that he had served 
 as an artillery officer, but had thrown up his com- 
 mission during the Egyptian War of 1882, giving as 
 his reason that it was beneath the dignity of an 
 officer and a gentleman to be called upon to act 
 virtually as a bum-bailifif for the Egyptian bond- 
 holders. After a period of unemployment, Mr. 
 Champion, who was a poor man — which made his 
 sacrifice of a career in the army all the more credit- 
 able — secured a post as sub-editor of an influential 
 monthly magazine. Concurrently, he identified him- 
 self with the Social Democrats, to whom his spirited 
 action in throwing up his commission warmly com- 
 mended him. So much, and no more, I already 
 knew of the man who was destined to have such an 
 influence on the development of the movement for 
 Labour representation ; for it was more in con- 
 nection with Labour representation than Socialist 
 representation that his activities eventually turned. 
 
 Burns entered my office in that breezy manner 
 which always distinguished him, and introduced 
 Champion. There was nothing striking about his 
 personal appearance. Early training and military 
 discipline had moulded Champion according to the 
 conventional pattern common in the purlieus of 
 Pall Mall. He was the artillery officer in mufti. 
 In temperament he remained the artillery officer, a 
 trait which largely accounted for his failures in the 
 British Labour movement, a movement dogmatically 
 democratic. I do not need to more than summarise 
 the conversation that ensued. Indeed, were it not 
 for one result of the visit, it would be unnecessary 
 to describe this incident at any length. 
 
 Burns hoped that I would continue to give him a 
 good show in the Operative, and I promised to 
 
HENRY HYDE CHAMPION 15 
 
 endeavour to do so. Champion asked me about its 
 prospects, and I painted them in as rosy colours as 
 my conscience would permit. Then we diverged to 
 discuss the recently established organ of the Social 
 Democrats, Justice, and Burns told me how the 
 comrades had given that paper a boom by all turn- 
 ing out to sell it in Fleet Street, the Strand, Picca- 
 dilly, and other leading London thoroughfares. 
 
 "You would scarcely believe it," he said, "to 
 look at Champion, but I assure you that he walked 
 the kerb with the rest, crying out ^Justice, one 
 penny ; the Organ of Social Democracy ! ' " 
 
 I said it was a noble thing to do, but did not 
 anticipate any such help to the Operative. 
 
 " You don't need it in Nottingham, I hope," said 
 Champion. " The General Election ought to float 
 you into deep water. As for the kerb-walking, as 
 Burns calls it, that was a small matter for a man 
 like me to do when such a giant in literature as 
 William Morris turned out. Besides, there was 
 Hyndman, and Herbert Burrows, and Hunter 
 Watts, and many others of what you may call the 
 top-hat brigade." 
 
 So we talked off and on for a time, and then, as 
 Burns and Champion were preparing to leave, I 
 broached the question which alone makes this con- 
 versation worth recording. 
 
 "Mr. Champion," I said, "there is one matter I 
 would like clearing up before you go. I am, as I 
 have assured you, quite willing to advance Burns's 
 candidature so far as faithful reports in the Operative 
 will do it. But I should be of far more service 
 could I conscientiously advocate his claims in its 
 editorial columns." 
 
 " Well," said Champion, on my pausing, " what is 
 the difficulty ? " 
 
 " Just this," I replied ; " you must be aware that 
 the question as to the source of Burns's election 
 
i6 JOHN BURNS 
 
 expenses is being freely discussed. The Liberals 
 suggest that they are coming from the Carlton Club, 
 and that his candidature is a mere device to split 
 the working-class vote and allow the Tory to slip 
 in?" 
 
 " Do you believe it ? " 
 
 "It is hard to know what to believe. That the 
 Tories would be quite willing to bribe the Social 
 Democrats I can understand. But bribery requires 
 a taker as well as offerer, and I am loth to beheve 
 that the Social Democrats would be privy to any 
 such tactics. Give me assurances on that point, 
 and I am with you whole-heartedly, for, though I 
 have not yet definitely acknowledged myself to be a 
 Social Democrat, I am beginning to see that it is a 
 big step in the right direction." 
 
 " That is a fair proposition," said Champion, " and 
 if you will excuse me for a moment I think I shall 
 be able to satisfy your scruples." 
 
 A whispered conversation with Burns ensued, 
 whereupon I suggested that I might leave them 
 alone for a few minutes. 
 
 " Don't mention it," said Champion, " the matter 
 is settled. We have agreed to take you into our 
 fullest confidence. But, as it involves another per- 
 son's secret, you must pledge yourself never, unless 
 you have his and our consent, to reveal that person's 
 identity. Do you agree ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 "Then can you spare to-morrow to accompany 
 me on a journey ? " 
 
 I explained that it would be at some incon- 
 venience, as practically everything was depending 
 upon me, but, as it happened, the morrow was my 
 easiest day, and I would place it at his disposal. 
 
 "Very well, then," said Champion, "if you will 
 meet me at my hotel at nine sharp, we will be just 
 in time to get a quick train." 
 
HENRY HYDE CHAMPION 17 
 
 The next day I called on Champion as arranged. 
 He sent for a hansom, and we drove to the station. 
 
 On our way I learned that we had quite a long 
 journey to make. It was noon when we arrived. 
 
 We drove up to our destination. It was a large 
 house within a spacious park. The mansion was 
 not visible from the lodge gates, but at a distance 
 of a quarter of a mile up the winding drive we 
 caught a glimpse of the turrets of a palatial edifice 
 towering over the intervening trees. 
 
 "Your friend keeps up considerable style," I 
 observed. 
 
 "This is nothing," Champion replied. "Wait 
 until you see the interior of the house. And all 
 out of soap ! " 
 
 That was the first intimation that the goal of our 
 journey was the lordly domain of a successful soap 
 manufacturer. My curiosity was, however, now 
 sharply whetted, and in answer to my questions 
 Champion informed me that we were about to call 
 upon Mr. Barlow, proprietor of the celebrated Bay 
 Soap. Barlow, he explained, was an old University 
 chum. They had been as Damon and Pythias for 
 years, though one was as rich as Midas and the 
 other as poor as the proverbial church mouse. " Of 
 course," he added, " I don't need to say that I am 
 the mouse." 
 
 Whereupon he laughed to himself, as if he enter- 
 tained quite a different opinion. Certainly, what- 
 ever else he might be, H. H, Champion had no 
 intention to play the part of mouse. 
 
 As our hansom drove up to the house, Mr. 
 Barlow, a slight, dark, and handsome man, who had 
 had a note from Champion to apprise him of our 
 visit, and a telephonic message from the lodge gates 
 to say that we had entered the park, made his 
 appearance at the door and welcomed Champion 
 with an affection seldom evinced by grown men, 
 
 B 
 
i8 JOHN BURNS 
 
 His manner towards me was full of good fellow- 
 ship, and put me at my ease immediately. 
 
 Doubtless he could see that I was somewhat over- 
 faced by the grandeur of his surroundings. Such 
 a place I had never visited before. I could, even 
 at this distance of time, write columns descriptive 
 of its architectural and art glories, but forbear. 
 
 Nor will I dilate on the delicious lunch that was 
 served, though it was one of those feasts which, as 
 the first of its kind, one always remembers. There 
 is matter more germane to my story to tell, and 
 with that I must, perforce, be content. 
 
 As Champion in the warning letter written over- 
 night had not only told Mr. Barlow of our visit, 
 but also of its purport, that gentleman, when our 
 creature comforts had been attended to, was able 
 to immediately plunge into the heart of our business. 
 
 What he said, however, I must reserve for an- 
 other chapter. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SOCIALIST MILLIONAIRE — BURNS DEFIES THE 
 LIBERALS 
 
 " I CAN quite understand your position," said Mr. 
 Barlow, when we had settled down, "and it is 
 essential that you should understand mine. You 
 see me here surrounded by every sign of great 
 wealth. And, as a matter of fact, I am what is 
 called a rich man. My wealth is not due to my 
 own exertions, but it would be very easily imperilled 
 by my own carelessness. I inherited a business 
 from my father which has, as you may be aware, 
 ramifications in every corner of the British Isles." 
 
 " Not to mention beyond the seas," interpolated 
 Champion. 
 
 "Yes," continued Barlow, "we also do a fair 
 amount of foreign trade, but that does not come 
 into our discussion. It is in no danger from any 
 indiscretion committed here. But our home trade, 
 on which I depend for the largest part of my 
 income, does undoubtedly run some risk of damage 
 should it ever become known that I am financing 
 the political schemes of our mutual friend, Cham- 
 pion. But I am taking that risk which, with 
 prudence, need not be great, and have agreed to 
 finance the candidature of this young fellow Burns, 
 which will only cost me a few hundreds — a mere 
 bagatelle. Moreover, I am also willing to assist in 
 similar enterprises in the future. I do so with 
 mixed motives. I do not mind confessing that the 
 system which enables me to live so luxuriously here 
 
20 JOHN BURNS 
 
 while so many men, quite as good and able as I 
 am, starve, does not commend itself to me as one 
 that can last. That is why I have become a 
 member of the Fabian Society. But I am financing 
 Burns, and am prepared to finance others, prin- 
 cipally out of the regard I have for Champion. 
 Whatever I do, however, must not be made public, 
 since that might kill the goose that lays the golden 
 eggs. You understand ? " 
 
 " I think I do. You fear that the sales of Bay 
 Soap might fall off were it known that a part of 
 the profits was being devoted to the financing of 
 Socialist candidates for Parliament ? " 
 
 " Precisely. You grasp the idea. Still, if I can 
 assist Champion to a career worthy of his abilities, 
 I am prepared to run the risk. I was awfully 
 annoyed when he threw up his commission in the 
 army. It was a quixotic thing to do. But there 
 is no use crying over spilt milk. So, for old time's 
 sake, when he came to me with his idea of forming 
 a new political party, with himself as its Parnell, 
 I said to him — ' Go ahead. You always had the 
 brains, and as I, luckily, have got the shekels, you 
 can draw on me for anything in reason. But you 
 must keep my name out of it.' That's all. Are 
 you satisfied ? " 
 
 What else could I be ? How was it possible for 
 me to doubt Mr. Barlow's bona fides ? I left his 
 mansion pledged, firstly, to secrecy so far as he 
 was concerned, and, secondly, to do all I could 
 to help forward Burns' candidature at West 
 Nottingham. 
 
 I returned to Nottingham the same night. 
 Champion, however, stayed till the following 
 morning with Mr. Barlow. I had also a warm 
 invitation to remain, but the work waiting for me 
 at home left me no alternative but to depart at 
 once. 
 
THE SOCIALIST MILLIONAIRE 21 
 
 The Bufns campaign need not be described in 
 detail. Its chief importance consists in that it 
 was the first Parliamentary contest fought by 
 British Social Democrats. 
 
 From the secondary and personal point of view, 
 its interest lies in its being the starting point of 
 John Burns' chameleon career as a Parliamentarian. 
 
 Of course it was the Liberal cue to represent 
 Burns as a paid agent of the Carlton Club sent 
 down simply to split the working class vote, but 
 he retorted with a Roland for their Oliver, alleging 
 that a prominent Liberal had called upon him at 
 his lodgings, and hinted at a monetary inducement 
 to withdraw from the contest. 
 
 This gentleman, whom Burns exposed to public 
 identification by saying he was a late member of 
 the Town Council, had — Burns said — fearing his 
 candidature if persisted in might endanger the 
 seat for the Liberal candidate. Colonel Seely, 
 hinted that his object in calling was to have a 
 friendly chat over the situation with the view to 
 making preliminary negotiations for some other 
 person to complete. 
 
 " I told him," said Burns, " that his visit would 
 be futile, as I had pledged myself to my future 
 constituents, and therefore declined to accept any 
 negotiations from either the Liberal or Tory parties. 
 
 "It is absolutely necessary," continued Burns, 
 "in view of the gross misrepresentation to which 
 I have been subjected by the Liberal Party with 
 regard to my being bribed by the Tories, that I 
 should make public a visit and transaction of this 
 kind, in order that the working men and others 
 may see that Liberals as well as Tories are willing 
 to offer bribes, or to use other backstairs influence 
 to achieve their object when libel fails." 
 
 The letter from which I am quoting closed with 
 a characteristic Burns' declaration. 
 
22 JOHN BURNS 
 
 "The man," he concluded, "who declined to 
 negotiate, or, in plain Nottingham language, re- 
 fused to be ' greased,' was John Burns, the Labour 
 candidate for the Western Division, and who now 
 states that any visitor to his lodgings, in an un- 
 official capacity or otherwise, will have to go 
 through a lively five minutes should he call for 
 the express purpose of inducing me to withdraw 
 from the contest, which must and will be fought 
 out to the end." 
 
 Probably what Burns meant by " a lively five 
 minutes " was a round or two at fisticuffs, for he 
 was inordinately proud of his proficiency in the 
 art of self-defence. He had, he was fond of saying, 
 slept with a prize-fighter. 
 
 As matters turned out, the feeling excited by 
 his defiance became so warm that Burns himself 
 had to go through a lively five minutes on his 
 way to a meeting in the Mechanics' Institute, held 
 on the 2oth November. 
 
 When Burns arrived at the Institute, it was 
 noticed that his lips were bleeding. The chairman 
 explained that the candidate would not be able 
 to speak long as, since he left home, some villain 
 had struck him in the mouth, but, " cost what it 
 might — life included — the battle would still be 
 fought to a finish." 
 
 Burns, who was enthusiastically received, apolo- 
 gised for the disadvantage under which he was 
 labouring, but, he added, it would take more than 
 a cowardly villain's fist coming in contact with 
 his mouth to detain him. 
 
 Then he went on with his speech, speaking at 
 his usual length. It was an electioneering speech, 
 in which he seemed most anxious to emphasise 
 that he was a Labour candidate, and complained 
 that the Liberals were asking his friends on Labour 
 organisations to rebut his candidature. He men- 
 
THE SOCIALIST MILLIONAIRE 23 
 
 tioned that he was so acceptable as a Labour 
 candidate that Mr. T. R. Threlfall, who that year 
 was the chairman of the Trades Union Congress, 
 had written to apologise for non-attendance, and 
 expressed the strongest hopes that he would be 
 returned. With regard to the efforts that were 
 being made to induce him to retire, he told the 
 working men that night, as he had told them weeks 
 ago, that come weal, come woe, John Burns, the 
 Labour candidate, would never retire. It had been 
 said that he had come to Nottingham to split the 
 party, but there was no party for the labourers 
 in the field, and he asked them whether a Labour 
 candidate of advanced views would be hkely to 
 meet the views of the caucus. He was called a 
 Tory tool, but did a Tory tool speak as he had 
 done on behalf of the people ; was a Tory tool 
 the man to be imprisoned for advocating the right 
 to free speech on public commons ? Feargus 
 O'Connor and George Odger were Called in their 
 day, as Lloyd Jones and John Burns were now 
 called, Tory tools, but it was through the ad- 
 vanced men of the Liberal Party that the country 
 had won the liberties they enjoyed that day, and, 
 with the help of the electors he meant to go in 
 the same direction, and achieve a victory which 
 would make all proud of the principles of the lace 
 manufacturing town of Nottingham. 
 
 Mr. Champion also spoke, but he dealt solely 
 with the efforts of the Liberals to get Burns to 
 withdraw. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the Liberals suffered 
 a serious fright, but how Httle reason they had for 
 their panic was demonstrated by the result of 
 the poll, which was declared as follows : — 
 
 Colonel Seely (Lib.) . . . 6609 
 
 E. Cope (Con.) .... 3797 
 John Burns (Soc.) .... 598 
 
24 JOHN BURNS 
 
 And so ended the fir^ provincial campaign of the 
 Social Democratic Federation. And with it con- 
 cluded my journalistic connection with Nottingham. 
 
 During the actual campaign, the Operative had 
 profited by the interest aroused. It was in its 
 columns that the fullest reports of the Social Demo- 
 cratic meetings could be obtained. Thus, for a 
 time, all seemed plain sailing. 
 
 But when the election was over, the slump com- 
 menced. It was something awful. Worse still, the 
 Liberal advertisers began a boycott. The culmina- 
 tion came in an action for libel. 
 
 There was a notorious debt collector in the 
 town, and his methods I had ridiculed in a set of 
 satirical verses. He stumped into my office the 
 day after publication, and purchased three copies. 
 These he marked in my presence and retired. 
 
 The next I heard of him was in a lawyer's letter 
 claiming ^^looo damages for libel. Close on this 
 came a communication from my printer, on whom 
 a similar legal document had been served. The 
 poor man was nearly demented. The case must be 
 settled at once, or it would be his ruin. 
 
 "Well," I said, " I'm sorry to have got you into 
 this mess, but I can't get you out. You must take 
 your own course." 
 
 He did so. He refused to print another issue of 
 my paper, and made peace with mine enemy by 
 paying ^20 and costs incurred. 
 
 And so came to an end my brief, inglorious 
 career as a newspaper proprietor. 
 
 In these circumstances the wife and I determined 
 to remove to London. There was surely a living 
 to be picked up there, we reasoned. 
 
 And there was ! Such a living 1 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON : WE MEET 
 BURNS IN HYDE PARK 
 
 Coming to such an ignominious collapse in my 
 newspaper enterprise, it will be easily understood 
 that when we migrated to London the wife and I 
 had not much money in our joint purse. 
 
 As a matter of fact, all we possessed was the 
 proceeds of the sale of the greater part of our 
 household goods. 
 
 Like most provincials, we had, on setting up a 
 home, been what is called "house-proud." Our 
 furniture was good, and, when the Operative ceased 
 publication, constituted our sole asset. From the 
 sale we reserved just sufficient to barely furnish 
 two rooms. 
 
 Those two rooms we were fortunate enough to 
 find in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. There were 
 three or four houses there, subsequently occupied 
 as offices, that were then tenement dwellings. On 
 the third floor of one of these we set up our 
 domicile. 
 
 Our living room overlooked the "Cheshire 
 Cheese," then in its palmy days. Often have I 
 and the wife sat at the window whence we could 
 see the landlord mixing the famous pie. And 
 there, too, we enjoyed many a free concert contri- 
 buted by the Bohemian habitues on a Saturday 
 night. 
 
 On the whole I think of those days of our early 
 
 25 
 
26 JOHN BURNS 
 
 sojourn in London as our happiest. We were poor, 
 but we were young. And there was so much to 
 see and to learn ! 
 
 Neither of us had visited London before. It was 
 to us a new world, and we explored it conscien- 
 tiously, and with never-failing zest. 
 
 On our first Sunday we started off up- Fleet 
 Street, turned into the Temple opposite Chancery 
 Lane, and reached the Embankment, that noble 
 promenade then recently reclaimed from the mud 
 of the Thames for the benefit of the ground land- 
 lords. 
 
 As we strolled along, with the wide sweep of the 
 mighty river on our left, and on our right the 
 palatial hotels and public buildings in all their 
 superb proportions, with every detail of decoration 
 displayed by the unclouded sun, I felt a degree of 
 enlargement such as I had never experienced in 
 my native town. 
 
 What struck me most were the open spaces and 
 the parks. I had ignorantly assumed London to 
 be awfully congested. I had imagined the Cockneys 
 as a race cribbed, cabined, and confined in endless 
 rows of houses. Similarly, the Cockney imagined 
 provincials all lived in country lanes, in cottages 
 embowered in honeysuckle, amid green fields. 
 
 The reality was very different. London has been 
 immensely improved since the eighties, but even 
 then there were districts in the Metropolis that 
 surpassed any provincial manufacturing town that 
 1 knew for foliage and open spaces. 
 
 1 and the wife were amazed with what we saw in 
 our ramble through the Green Park and St. James's 
 Park to Hyde Park. With the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment and the glorious Abbey we were familiar from 
 pictures. But the flowers and the trees, the lakes, 
 and the long stretches of greensward, free from the 
 objectionable warnings not to walk on the grass 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON 27 
 
 which were so common in provincial parks — 
 these were a revelation to us, and delighted our 
 souls. 
 
 Added to this surprising mixture of sylvanity and 
 civilisation, we had the consciousness that we were 
 breathing the same air, and had the possibility of 
 holding personal communion with men and women 
 prominent in the political, literary, and art worlds. 
 
 Speaking for myself, I had never been a student 
 of Nature. I loved to be amongst trees and flowers, 
 but had never experienced any particular curiosfity 
 to know which tree might be an oak or a beech, 
 and beyond roses and buttercups and daisies, it 
 would have puzzled me to name a single specimen 
 of the flowers and fragrances in which I delighted. 
 It had never occurred to me to inquire. The 
 flowers and the trees were there, their rustle and 
 their incense satisfied, I loved to watch the lofty 
 plumes bending to the unseen breeze, I loved to 
 note the harmonious colouring of the opening 
 flowers, but to label and classify them — that had 
 been beyond my ambition. ' 
 
 Not so with men and women, with human 
 nature, the noblest work of God. I had delighted 
 in the study of character, in the classification of 
 individuals, m noting how well-defined mannerisms 
 were unconsciously reproduced. I had quite a 
 gallery of provincial portraits in my mind, and 
 could diagnose how certain people would act in 
 given circumstances as accurately as if my own 
 soul inhabited their bodies. 
 
 Now I had an opportunity to widen my field of 
 observation, and to bring within its purview men 
 and women of, I thought, more importance than 
 mere provincials. I learned later that it was the 
 material in which men worked that made their 
 relative positions, that there was quite as much 
 intellect displayed in managing a Town Council as 
 
28 JOHN BURNS 
 
 in controlling a Cabinet, but that one man moulded 
 in clay while another carved in marble. 
 
 Absorbing our new impressions, for the wife and 
 I, like all good companions, could be eloquently 
 silent, we reached Hyde Park. What we saw there 
 was another revelation. 
 
 It is common now for the provincial public parks 
 to be utilised as forums for discussion, but at the 
 time of which I write, the London parks had 
 almost a monopoly of such gatherings, and Hyde 
 Park was supreme over the rest. 
 
 There assembled, Sunday after Sunday, all those 
 who, like the Athenians of old, were ever on the 
 look-out for some new doctrine. 
 
 The Marble Arch was the modern Mar's Hill. 
 Men of all beliefs and of no beliefs, disciples of 
 the Christian Evidence Society, followers of Charles 
 Bradlaugh, Mormons, Orangemen, Catholics, Revi- 
 valists, Anarchists, and Socialists, could be found 
 there, pouring forth a never-ending stream of 
 oratory, passionate, supplicatory, argumentative, 
 reproachful, disdainful, humorous, sarcastic — every 
 conceivable style under heaven. 
 
 Here it was, and on this our first Sunday in 
 London, that I again met John Burns. He was in 
 the centre of a big ring, dominated by a red flag, 
 debating with an Individualist. This gentleman 
 had taken exception to Burns's statements in his 
 opening speech, and had been allowed to advance 
 an argument against them. Burns was in the full 
 flow of his reply when the wife and I reached 
 the outer edge of the rapidly-increasing audience. 
 
 " This gentleman," he was saying, " has suggested 
 a remedy for the evils I pointed out in my intro- 
 ductory speech. To a Socialist his remedy is a 
 peculiar one. He suggests the moralisation of 
 industry and capital. 
 
 " Moralise capital ! You might as well try to 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON 29 
 
 moralise the lion that was about to devour the 
 lamb ; you might as well attempt to moralise the 
 boa-constrictor that has its coils round the body 
 of its victim. Can you moralise the retired capi- 
 talist out of his 300 square miles of deer forest, 
 or out of his steam yacht, or out of his guinea 
 orchid he wears in his button-hole ? All such 
 privileged luxuries are secured by the exploitation 
 of labour, and by the prostitution of genius and 
 ability to the very lowest degree. 
 
 " Our friend argued that moralisation of capital 
 could be brought about by a system of education. 
 Education has so far enabled the capitalist to import 
 from the realms of science and invention the means 
 by which labour is deprived of its surplus value, 
 and this has been done in the most subtle forms. 
 The genius and ability of our greatest men has 
 been prostituted by landlord and the capitalist 
 in their service, and against the interest of the 
 proletariat. 
 
 "What sense is there in pleading, as our friend 
 has done, that many capitalists have done a great 
 deal for their employees ? Yes ; but at whose 
 expense ? From what source ? Have the capi- 
 talists some hidden source from which they secure 
 their wealth, which, he has said, they devote to 
 the improvement of the condition of their workers ? 
 No ; they first get it from labour, or from rent, 
 or from profits. 
 
 " There was no way of stopping such robbery," 
 he concluded, " except by nationalisation of land, 
 capital, and credit." 
 
 As the meeting was dispersing Burns caught 
 sight of my wife and I. He came over to us, and 
 we walked in the direction of Hyde Park Corner. 
 
 "How did you like it," he inquired. "Didn't 
 I double him up ? " Burns was always hungry 
 for praise. 
 
30 JOHN BURNS 
 
 I duly congratulated him on his effort, and then 
 he inquired about our affairs. I told him where 
 we were living, and asked him to call, and to 
 bring Mrs. Burns, whose acquaintance my wife 
 had made in Nottingham. I was afraid, I added, 
 that the wife would find London very lonely, and 
 a difficult place in which to make friends. 
 
 "Not at all," said Burns. "You must join the 
 Democratic Club. I don't go very much myself, 
 as Battersea is quite a long distance away, and I 
 am not a clubable man, but you are near to 
 Chancery Lane, where the club is situated. Will 
 you allow me to introduce you ? " 
 
 I said we would be delighted, and it was arranged 
 that Burns would come up on the following Saturday 
 evening. 
 
 "There is always a House Dinner on Saturdays," 
 he said. " The prices are democratic : one shilling 
 for three courses. And to follow there will be one 
 of the finest concerts to be heard in all London." 
 
 On this understanding we parted, and the wife 
 and I looked forward with great interest to our 
 introduction to the Democratic Club. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 WE ARE INTRODUCED TO THE DEMOCRATS 
 
 The Democratic Club, from i886 to 1896, was 
 the resort of all those who gave life and being 
 to the advanced movements of the Metropolis. 
 Here assembled those daring spirits who would 
 have ventured on any enterprise, from editing 
 the Times to commanding the Channel Fleet. 
 And yet, alas ! the Committee were so unbusi- 
 nesslike that they justified Burns's later jibe, that 
 while they aspired to revolutionise the world, they 
 had not the ability to run a whelk stall. 
 
 The first habitation of the club was a basement 
 in Chancery Lane. Here it was located when I 
 first became a member. But I knew the club in 
 two other environments. When, through finan- 
 cial difficulties, the Democratic was turned out 
 of the Chancery Lane premises, the furniture was 
 stored for some months in a pantechnicon. It 
 eventually suggested itself to Bennet Burleigh, 
 the Telegraph war correspondent, who bossed the 
 club when not on foreign duty, that to allow it 
 to eat its head off there was bad policy, and a 
 resuscitation took place. This time premises were 
 secured on the upper floors of a suite of offices 
 in Essex Street. 
 
 The Essex Street period was the hey-day of 
 the club's prosperity. It covered 1892 and 1893. 
 In 1894 there was another financial crisis, and 
 the furniture had to be sold. But the idea of a 
 
 3» 
 
32 JOHN BURNS 
 
 club survived, and a third incarnation occurred 
 in premises over Belcher's Dining Rooms, just 
 between Shoe Lane and Holborn. But the club 
 there was a mere ghost of what it had been in 
 its palmy days, and it died a natural death, to 
 rise no more. 
 
 Cunninghame Graham, at the time I was intro- 
 duced to the club, was its only M.P. Graham was 
 not a frequent habitud. At a later period Keir 
 Hardie joined. But in 1886, Hardie's star had not 
 risen above the horizon. 
 
 Neither had the world come to know the names 
 of Tom Mann and Ben Tillett, who were lifted into 
 prominence three years later by the Dock Strike. 
 Nor had John Burns much of a reputation then. 
 He had flitted across the political stage at Notting- 
 ham the previous year. 
 
 Bennet Burleigh, as I have said, was the prin- 
 cipal supporter of the club in its Chancery Lane 
 and Essex Street homes. Burleigh, in those days, 
 had a consuming ambition to become an M.P. I 
 remember him fighting three elections, beginning 
 as a Gladstonian-Liberal, then changing over to 
 Liberal-Unionism, and ending as a Labour can- 
 didate. 
 
 Burleigh had not the political fortune of another 
 old member of the club, who became Sir Henry 
 Dalziel. The luck was with Dalziel after he 
 forced himself on the Kirkcaldy Burghs, one of 
 the finest pieces of bluff ever known. Prior to 
 that Dalziel had had his share of Fortune's buffets. 
 He migrated to the National Liberal immediately 
 he got his foot on the ladder of Parliament, and 
 the Democratic knew him no more. 
 
 The club had always a number of pressmen 
 amongst its members. Another journalistic mem- 
 ber of the club was W. M. Thompson, barrister, 
 counsel for John Burns on both of his appearances 
 
INTRODUCED TO THE DEMOCRATS 33 
 
 at the Old Bailey. At the time I became a member 
 of the club Thompson was writing the "Dodo" 
 articles in Reynolds's. Some years later he became 
 the editor of that paper, and founded the National 
 Democratic League. Another Reynolds writer, 
 John Morrison Davidson, the famous publicist, 
 practically lived in the club. In addition to those 
 named, quite a number of less distinguished 
 journalists were members. 
 
 The Democratic, it will be seen, was not a 
 Socialist club. As a matter of fact the leaders 
 of the two then existing Socialist organisations, the 
 Social Democrats and the Fabians, rather fought 
 shy of it. They would come to lecture on the 
 Wednesday evenings, but, like Burns, they spent 
 little time in the club. But a good many of the 
 rank and file of both bodies were members, and 
 gave the club a Socialist tinge. Its general tone 
 was revolutionary — Republicans, Irish Nationalists, 
 and Anarchists were numbered amongst its mem- 
 bers. Nihilists, like Stepniak and Volkofsky, came 
 to lecture ; Henri Rochefort was its guest at a 
 House dinner ; and, to restore the balance, so was 
 Mr. Haldane, in the days before he had become a 
 Cabinet Minister, and was dabbling in Fabian 
 subtleties. It was this variety that constituted the 
 special charm of the Democratic. It was impos- 
 sible to be dull there, because every shade of 
 opinion — political, social, or religious — was repre- 
 sented amongst its members, who were invariably 
 militant in the proclamation of their opinions. 
 
 Naturally, such a place as this became a resort 
 of all who came to the front in the Labour move- 
 ment. All such men inevitably gravitated to the 
 Democratic. In a word, it was a veritable Cave of 
 Adullam for all who had turned their hands against 
 Society as then constituted. 
 
 In addition, the Democratic was one of the 
 
 c 
 
34 JOHN BURNS 
 
 earliest of the Cock and Hen Clubs, and amongst 
 my pleasant recollections are those associated with 
 its lady members. 
 
 Eleanor Marx, the favourite daughter of Karl 
 Marx; May Morris, the daughter of William 
 Morris ; Mrs. Annie Besant, prior to her Theo- 
 sophical days — these were among our more pro- 
 minent members. In addition there were quite a 
 number of ladies living bachelors lives in London, 
 some as artists, some as journalists, some enjoying 
 modest incomes, who found the club very convenient. 
 
 I think it was what Burns told me about the 
 lady members that made me so ready to join the 
 club. My wife had no London friends ; here, I 
 thought, was a place where she could make ac- 
 quaintances. And I greatly preferred a resort to 
 which I could take her, for I was not the man to 
 bring a young wife into London from the provinces, 
 away from all her kith and kin, and then desert her 
 while enjoying myself at a club. 
 
 So, when Burns looked us up on the Saturday 
 night, we were both quite ready and willing to 
 enter upon our adventures. And quite an adven- 
 turous evening, in the sense of making new dis- 
 coveries, did that Saturday night prove. 
 
 Burns, to our disappointment, told us, as he led 
 us down Chancery Lane, that he would not be 
 able to stay at the club. Another engagement had 
 cropped up, for which he was frank enough to say 
 he was not sorry. The fact was, he explained, that 
 he was always bored by the club, and but that he 
 had promised me an introduction, would never 
 have thought of spending the night there. How- 
 ever, he would put us in good hands, and then 
 take his departure. 
 
 I said I took it very kindly that he should come 
 all the way from Battersea on our account, and 
 how sorry we were that he could not stay. 
 
INTRODUCED TO THE DEMOCRATS 35 
 
 "Don't mention it," he replied, adding the next 
 moment, " We have arrived ; follow me." 
 
 Burns turned into the passage of a suite of offices, 
 descended to the basement, and we dutifully fol- 
 lowed. A long passage similar to the one above, 
 ran from the foot of the stairs. The Democratic 
 Club occupied the rooms all along the right hand 
 side of this passage. 
 
 The first door was marked " Democratic Club : 
 enter two doors lower down." Burns went to the 
 door indicated, threw it open, and invited us to enter. 
 
 The room into which we entered was the middle 
 one of a suite of three. The ground plan would 
 not be unlike a gigantic letter T. The foot of the 
 letter consisted of a small room through the open 
 door of which we could glimpse a kitchen and bar. 
 The room in which we stood made the narrow stem 
 of the letter. The cross-piece consisted of a large 
 room cut off by hanging curtains, presented, I after- 
 wards learned by William Morris. 
 
 Between the kitchen and the club-room there was 
 a great bustle of men and women carrying plates 
 and dishes. These, Burns informed us, were the 
 committee and active members, democratically lay- 
 ing the tables for the Saturday night house dinner. 
 It was, Burns explained, the rule of the club that no 
 waiters were to be employed. A skeleton staff 
 looked after the kitchen and the bar, but all the 
 carrying to and fro, and the waiting at the tables, 
 had to be done by the members themselves. 
 
 One of the most active of those engaged in this 
 work was a big, blond fellow, whom Burns addressed 
 as Burleigh. He was holding aloft a heavily-laden 
 tray, and steering his way from the kitchen to the 
 club-rooin. 
 
 " Hello, Jack," he replied. " Just a minute and 
 ril be with you." 
 
 " That is Bennet Burleigh,"said Burns, " Demo- 
 
36 JOHN BURNS 
 
 cracy is supposed to rule here, but, as elsewhere, 
 there is a boss, and Burleigh is the man. I will 
 place you under his wing." 
 
 When Burleigh returned, we were duly intro- 
 duced, and then Burns left us to attend to his other 
 engagement. 
 
 " Come this way," said Burleigh, leading us into 
 the large room behind the curtains. "There is no 
 ceremony here. Make yourself comfortable ; hang 
 your things where you can. I will return to you 
 when the dinner is served." 
 
 With this Burleigh hurried off on the business 
 our advent had interrupted. We followed his 
 advice, divested ourselves of our wraps, and sat 
 down waiting events. 
 
 There was a large company assembled, but no 
 one seemed to notice our presence. I thought at 
 first it was rudeness. Later on I learned that it was 
 the height of good behaviour. They did not wish 
 to embarrass us, seeing we were strangers, by seem- 
 ing to notice our presence. 
 
 But if they took no notice of us, we were not so 
 indifferent to them. Two long tables occupied the 
 centre of the room, and across the head there 
 was a table for the president and guests. About 
 these tables Burleigh and his fellow-democrats — 
 who happened to be committee men — were busy 
 preparing for the dinner. But, at the foot of the 
 room, round the two fireplaces, a motley gathering 
 of men and women, who were waiting to dine, had 
 assembled. 
 
 There were couches along the walls, and large, 
 deep easy chairs before the fires. Disposed on, in, 
 and about were a picturesque crowd of men and 
 women. Those for whom there were not seating 
 accommodation leaned over the backs of the occu- 
 pied chairs, or sat on the arms thereof. 
 
 Many of these free and easy persons were women, 
 
INTRODUCED TO THE DEMOCRATS 37 
 
 and nearly all were smoking cigarettes. I looked at 
 my wife, and she looked at me. It was the first 
 time we had been in Bohemia, or had seen women 
 under seventy years of age indulging in the weed. 
 
 The smoke made the rooms oppressive, but no 
 one seemed to care. The ceilings were low, and 
 although the place was fitted for the electric light, 
 oil lamps were in use. I learned afterwards that 
 the electricity had been cut off to enforce payment 
 of the bill. 
 
 We passed a quarter of an hour watching the 
 scene. Then Burleigh came and asked us to occupy 
 seats at the table of honour. He would take no 
 denial. He was chairman, and insisted that my 
 wife and I should be his right and left hand sup- 
 porters. 
 
 Accordingly we took our places, Burleigh ladled 
 out the soup, and the dinner began. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 A "house" dinner at the democratic 
 
 Although the wife and I sat on the right and left 
 of Burleigh, it was very little attention he could pay 
 to us while the dinner was in progress. It was his 
 duty to serve the soup, to carve the joint, and to 
 make himself generally agreeable. 
 
 So he commended us to our neighbours, who 
 made themselves very agreeable. 
 
 My wife was in charge of the secretary of the 
 club, who gave me the impression that he belonged 
 to the ministerial profession. The wife told me 
 afterwards that I was correct. He had been con- 
 fidential to her on the ground of a fellow provincial 
 feeling, though he came from Belfast. He had 
 there, she said, been in charge of a Congregational 
 Church, but had found himself frozen out by the 
 richer members because of his sympathy with the 
 dockers of that port. He had headed a crusade, so 
 she understood, against the practice of paying 
 wages in public-houses, a matter in which he had 
 the support of his congregation, but when he went 
 on to advocate better conditions and higher re- 
 muneration for the men, his deacons and principal 
 financial supporters gave him the cold shoulder. 
 He had come to London, and intended to found a 
 Brotherhood Church as soon as he could. There 
 was, he explained, a derelict Church, with a very 
 sparse membership, in the North of London, which 
 he hoped to capture and convert to his views. 
 
 S8 
 
DINNER AT THE DEMOCRATIC 39 
 
 Meantime, he was acting as secretary for the club 
 at a nominal honorarium. 
 
 I think it as \A/ell to put in the character of the 
 club secretary, lest readers should gather the im- 
 pression that the Democratic had anything immoral 
 about it. The members were decidedly free in their 
 relations with each other, but it was the freedom of 
 equality and camaraderie, not of loose living. I 
 will not go so far as to say that during the ten 
 years of its existence there was an entire absence of 
 scandal ; one could not say that of even a church. 
 But though unconventional, the moral standard 
 of the Democrats was intrinsically high. Most 
 of the married men brought their wives. Indeed, 
 the club was one happy family. 
 
 My right-hand neighbour was a foreign lady, 
 whose name was Madame Delisle. She spoke with 
 a French accent. 
 
 " Meester Burleigh," she said, " tells me you 
 are newly come into London ; how like you ze 
 Club ? As we seet here side by side you must 
 let me tell you all about eet." 
 
 "You are too kind to me, a perfect stranger," 
 I murmured. 
 
 "We meet not as strangers," she replied, "but 
 as freends who may haf been long parted, so long 
 as recollection may haf feeded away, but who haf 
 met before. Deed you not publeesh ze Nottingham 
 Operative ? Ah, you see you are not altogether un- 
 known in ze Club. Say not then we are strangers. 
 From to-night we are freends. I must introduce 
 you to mine companion." 
 
 Madame introduced her "companion," who, I 
 learned subsequently, was really her companion 
 and secretary, as Agatha Herod. She was a very 
 striking young lady. Her dress was a flowing 
 robe of red, guiltless of corset, loosely bound at 
 her waist by a sash, and carrying only the sparsest 
 
40 JOHN BURNS 
 
 of black lace trimming at the bosom and neck. 
 Long sleeves, hanging wide at the wrists, completed 
 a daring scheme of colour, which only a woman 
 of strong character and great personal attractions 
 could have the courage to conceive or the ability 
 to carry through. That she had a strong character, 
 a glance at her profile convinced me. She seemed 
 capable of great sternness. Her chin and mouth 
 were strongly carved. When she turned to acknow- 
 ledge my greeting, a smile from her dark eyes 
 modified the first impression. 
 
 Madame herself was of a very different type. 
 Her features, strongly marked, were of the Jewish 
 cast. She was richly garbed, with more osten- 
 tation of wealth than I noticed in any other 
 person present. But she was good company, and 
 gave me much information about the assembled 
 members. 
 
 But while I willingly gave my ears to Madame 
 Delisle, and listened to her good-natured talk, 
 which was mostly about the more distinguished 
 of the men present, my eyes were wandering round 
 the tables, resting here and there on the lady 
 members. They were all so strange to me. And 
 amongst them were some beauties of a more exotic 
 type than had bloomed in our Nottinghamshire 
 gardens. One lady had a most dazzling com- 
 plexion, heightened by a black pimple on her 
 temple, after the fashion of the beauty spots of 
 a past generation. Another had almost boyish 
 features. Indeed, had she worn a forage cap she 
 would have been a very fair representation of a 
 military cadet. A contrast to her was afforded 
 by a third member with a round. Madonna face, 
 peach bloom cheeks, and demure eyes. Still a 
 fourth reminded me of Hypatia, her classic features 
 bearing a marble pallor. I became very good 
 friends with all these ladies later on, but at first 
 
DINNER AT THE DEMOCRATIC 41 
 
 blush they seemed denizens of a world with which 
 I had never been acquainted. 
 
 But why prolong a description by which I 
 cannot hope to do more than realise the faintest 
 whiff of the atmosphere of that unique club ? 
 Suffice it to say that it was in this environment 
 that many of the outstanding Labour events of 
 the next few years germinated. The Democratic 
 Club was really the " Behind the Scenes " of many 
 developments that were played out on a much 
 larger stage, while its Saturday night concerts 
 commanded the best amateur and professional 
 talent in London. 
 
 To my wife and I it became a veritable godsend. 
 We quickly made many congenial friends. And 
 the interests of the members were so varied, and 
 their characters so contrasted, that it was possible 
 to sit in the club room and study at our con- 
 venience a perfect microcosm of all that was 
 being thought, said, and done in progressive circles. 
 
 I am sure we could never have lived through 
 those hard times, when our home was up two 
 flights of stairs in the tenement house in the 
 narrow Wine Office Court, but for the change and 
 relief afforded at the Democratic Club. The wife, 
 I think, benefited even more by it than I did. My 
 work, hunting up news, took me out a good deal 
 at nights, and then she would slip over to Chancery 
 Lane, and enjoy the versatile company to be 
 found there, and when I had turned in my night's 
 " stuff," there I would call for her, and we would 
 return home quite reconciled to the strange en- 
 vironment in which we two young provincials 
 found ourselves. 
 
 And I must say that the Club assisted me to 
 get a footing in the casual journalism of Fleet 
 Street. I obtained many tips from one or another 
 that helped me to an exclusive piece of news. 
 
42 JOHN BURNS 
 
 Sometimes they came through my wife, who was 
 much more sociable than I. 
 
 When I had brought off successfully one or 
 two of these "scoops," I began to be known 
 amongst the Fleet Street "liners," In those days 
 the "liners" were mainly broken-down members 
 of all the professions, with a sprinkling of am- 
 bitious young men who were striving to get their 
 feet upon the ladder of a staff appointment. 
 
 Competition was keen. Any one who had an 
 item of news was at liberty to send it in to any or 
 all of the papers. Generally the first to arrive 
 was accepted by the sub-editors. The rest of the 
 messages dealing with the same event were pitched 
 into the waste-paper basket. On the Saturday the 
 lucky contributor called at the office for his pay 
 at so much — generally a penny — per line. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances it might have 
 taken me a considerable time to secure a living- 
 wage connection, but it so happened that shortly 
 after my arrival in London there was a con- 
 siderable boom in Labour and Socialist news, and 
 of this I reaped the advantage. 
 
 That boom began with the West End riots in 
 February 1886, as a result of which Burns, 
 Williams, Champion, and Hyndman, were indicted 
 for seditious conspiracy, and tried at the Old 
 Bailey before Mr. Justice Cave. I made good 
 money out of those disturbances, which set me on 
 my feet with the Fleet Street sub-editors as a man 
 with a good nose for exclusive Labour and Socialist 
 news. 
 
 As I have just now mentioned for the first time 
 Mr. Hyndman, the man who played the leading 
 part in the drama of British Socialism for a period 
 of nearly forty years, it is proper that I should 
 do him the due honour of a formal introduction. 
 
 Not that he needs it in the sense that Champion 
 
DINNER AT THE DEMOCRATIC 43 
 
 did. The story of British Socialism cannot be 
 told without relating Hyndman's part in it, and 
 when I come to deal with the events occurring 
 between 1905 and 1920, he will bulk more largely 
 than in this story. 
 
 In the i88o's Hyndman was in the foreground of 
 everything. In the 1890's Keir Hardie and the 
 Independent Labour Party somewhat obscured 
 Hyndman and the Social Democrats. In the 1900's 
 the United Labour Party reigned paramount. But 
 Hyndman's name and reputation are dear and 
 familiar to the men and women of this generation. 
 It may be of interest, therefore, to learn how he 
 impressed me, a contemporary, of the eighties. 
 
 I first heard Hyndman speak at West Nottingham, 
 during the Burns' Election campaign. What struck 
 me most about him was the contrast between his 
 language and his looks. His appearance was in- 
 tensely respectable. He never discarded the silk 
 hat of conventionality. A luxuriant beard hung 
 down to the top button of his inevitable frock-coat. 
 About the corners of his eyes were the wee wrinkles 
 that bespeak humour, but his ample forehead was 
 free from furrows. Altogether, he had a benevolent 
 aspect, and when one heard his flowing periods 
 and fiery rhetoric, one came to the conclusion that — 
 
 " He was the mildest-mannered man 
 That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat." 
 
 Such, as he appeared to me, was Henry Mayers 
 Hyndman, the founder of the Social Democratic 
 Federation, and, so long as he lived, its leader. At 
 the time of these events he was forty-five years of age. 
 He came of a wealthy London family, had been 
 educated at Cambridge, and had played cricket for 
 his University. His books and pamphlets made 
 many converts to Socialism, of whom, perhaps, the 
 
44 JOHN BURNS 
 
 most fruitful was Robert Blatchford, whose Merrie 
 England sold close on two million of copies, and 
 who, about this time, was serving his apprenticeship 
 to journalism on the staff of BelFs Life. But 
 Blatchford's story cannot be told here. Just now 
 it is his Socialist mentor with whom I have to deal, 
 and those with whom Hyndman was associated in 
 the stirring events it is now my duty to describe. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FAIR TRADE IN THE EIGHTIES 
 
 During 1885 and 1886 there was a severe Unem- 
 ployed Crisis, one of the many that were instru- 
 mental in opening the eyes of the citizens to the 
 imperfections of the Individualistic State. 
 
 It was the continued existence of hundreds of 
 thousands of people out of work that turned so 
 many to thoughts of Socialism in those early days. 
 
 But for a time other movements arose side by 
 side with that for Socialism. The Fair Trade 
 agitation was one of those ebullitions of dissatis- 
 faction with things as they were. 
 
 You may remember that the famous Joseph 
 Chamberlain revived the Fair Trade idea in the 
 early years of this century under the name of 
 Tariff Reform. It was as a consequence of the 
 agitation for Tariff Reform that the Socialist Parties 
 in Great Britain became unified. 
 
 Tariff Reform and Socialism had always this in 
 common — the conditions favourable to the growth 
 of one were favourable to the growth of the other. 
 The underlying idea of both was Protection, but 
 with this vital difference. Tariff Reform postulated 
 that the workers needed to be protected from 
 enemies abroad ; Socialism taught that their enemies 
 were in their midst. 
 
 What ultimately set Socialism on its feet as a 
 Parliamentary force was the development of a 
 supplementary idea, namely, that British workmen 
 really did need protection from competitors abroad 
 
 4S 
 
46 JOHN BURNS 
 
 — that class of competitors who were financed by 
 British capital unpatrioticaliy invested in foreign 
 lands, the profits upon which, amounting to 150 
 millions sterling value per annum, brought into 
 the country in the form of commodities — excess 
 imports — robbed the British workman of the oppor- 
 tunity to supply the home market to the extent of 
 the labour incorporated in the imported excess goods. 
 
 From the moment that this idea was accepted, 
 and a penal tax proposed on the realised profits, the 
 Socialists had an election cry that differentiated 
 them from the Free Traders and the Tariff Re- 
 formers, and since then the progress of Parliamen- 
 tary Socialism has been unchecked. 
 
 But I must get back to 1886. My apology for 
 such dissertations is the impossibility of dealing 
 retrospectively with now accomplished events, with- 
 out occasionally lifting the veil a little higher than 
 the exact chronological period which one is de- 
 scribing would strictly warrant. 
 
 The West End riots of 1886 arose out of a 
 demonstration in Trafalgar Square organised by the 
 Fair Traders. This demonstration was intended 
 to draw the whole of the organised workmen of 
 London into line with that movement. The Social 
 Democrats, however, were fiercely antagonistic, 
 and after capturing the bulk of the assembled 
 crowd, invited their audience to parade through 
 Clubland to Hyde Park. On the route the pro- 
 cessionists were jeered at by the ill-advised members 
 of certain clubs — and that started the riots. 
 
 I had, in my capacity of reporter of all Labour 
 movements, been studying the Fair Traders for 
 some time. They attracted my attention before 
 migrating to London. In August of the preceding 
 year, 1885, I had read in the papers of a deputation 
 of Fair Traders to interview Lord Salisbury at the 
 Foreign Office. Their leaders were three men named 
 
FAIR TRADE IN THE EIGHTIES 47 
 
 Lemon, Kelly, and Peters. Lemon was generally 
 known as Captain Lemon, and he was president of 
 what was called the British Seamen's Society. 
 Kelly and Peters also held official positions in 
 trades associated with the water-side industries. 
 
 The deputation to the Foreign Office was intro- 
 duced by the Lord Mayor. 
 
 Mr. Kelly, on behalf of the London river-side 
 workers, said employment had fallen off in the West 
 India and other docks. What the intelligent and 
 representative working man wanted was work and 
 wages. They wanted to protect themselves from 
 the constantly increasing inroads of foreign ex- 
 ported productions. 
 
 Mr. Peters claimed that public opinion was on 
 their side. He said the British workman wanted a 
 fair field and no favour. He hoped that Lord 
 Salisbury would be the last British Statesman he 
 would have to consult on this matter. 
 
 Lord Salisbury replied that it was no use to 
 come to the Foreign Office. They must go to the 
 public and change public opinion. The Foreign 
 Office could do nothing in negotiation until it had 
 power to make a bargain. 
 
 All through the General Election of 1885 the cry 
 of the Fair Traders was heard. The Election 
 ousted Lord Salisbury, who had succeeded to Mr. 
 Gladstone in June, from office. But there was a 
 feeling that Gladstone's Government would be but 
 short-lived, and the Fair Traders, during January 
 1886, organised the Trafalgar Square demonstration, 
 out of which the riots arose. 
 
 Those riots were entirely unpremeditated. The 
 responsibility really lay on the shoulders of the 
 police, and the Commissioner of Police was com- 
 pelled to resign. Had there been any decent force 
 of police on duty, the mob would never have got 
 out of hand. 
 
48 JOHN BURNS 
 
 But there can be no question that Burns and the 
 Social Democrats, while not conspiring to riot, did 
 arrange for a counter-demonstration against the 
 Fair Traders. Burns was always vociferously in- 
 dignant against men whom he alleged to be para- 
 sites on the Labour movement. Against Lemon, 
 Kelly, and Peters the vials of his wrath were volum- 
 inously outpoured. 
 
 " Look here," he said to me one night in the 
 Democratic, " what do you think of this ? " 
 
 "This" was a handbill calling the Fair Trade 
 Demonstration in Trafalgar Square for the 8th of 
 February. 
 
 "Oh," said I, "I've got a copy already. I don't 
 think much about it. Another red herring." 
 
 "That is just what it is," said Burns. "But let 
 Messrs. Lemon, Kelly, and Peters look out for 
 squalls." 
 
 " Why ? " said L " What do you intend to do ? " 
 
 " Steal the pitch before they arrive. We decided 
 to do so at a meeting in Holborn last Sunday, and 
 I have just come away from an Executive meeting 
 at which all the arrangements were made. I'm to 
 bell the cat and be chairman." 
 
 "All right," said I, " I'll be there, no fear." 
 
 Burns's hint inspired me to ferret out Kelly, who 
 was the organiser of the demonstration, and with- 
 out warning him of what the Social Democrats 
 intended, I secured an advance copy of the resolution 
 to be submitted. 
 
 I put it in here because it helps to explain the 
 indignation Burns expressed, and that all the Social 
 Democrats — myself included — felt ; the plausible 
 character of the resolution made it, so they believed, 
 dangerous to the uneducated workmen. 
 
 It reads as follows : — 
 
 "That it is the duty of Her Majesty's Government 
 and all Local Authorities throughout the country 
 
FAIR TRADE IN THE EIGHTIES 49 
 
 to start useful public works for the employment of 
 the great masses of workmen unemployed through 
 no fault of their own. 
 
 "That, in order to maintain the farm labourer 
 on the soil of the United Kingdom so as to check 
 the ever-increasing influx of that class of useful 
 labour into our great towns, where there is no 
 demand for it, causing much misery and suffering, 
 not only to the men themselves, but to the town 
 labourer, and causing wages to fall to the lowest 
 point, the time has now come when Parliament 
 should earnestly settle itself to succour and relieve 
 our distressed agricultural industry in the interests 
 of our national labour. 
 
 "And that, bearing in mind the disastrous effects 
 of foreign tariffs on British labour abroad, and 
 upon home industries in our national markets by 
 the operation of foreign trade bounties, this meeting 
 declares that the time has arrived when a Minister 
 of Commerce and Agriculture should be appointed 
 by Her Majesty's Government so as to look after 
 the interests of British Labour in our own and 
 foreign markets, and secure fair play for home 
 industries." 
 
 Looking at that resolution in the light of his- 
 torical achievement, one can now see how, despite 
 the bitter antagonism of the early Socialists, the 
 Fair Traders had the root of the matter in them. 
 They, like the latter Tariff Reformers, placed their 
 fingers on a sore place in the body politic. Their 
 fault was that they simply applied a salve to the 
 sore instead of seeking to eradicate its deep-seated 
 causes. But when one reflects how the Labour 
 Party and the Socialists also, for more than a genera- 
 tion, continued to ignore foreign investments, the 
 abuse which vitiated Free Trade — sound in itself — 
 one is constrained to feel more charitably towards 
 even the Fair Traders. 
 
 O 
 
50 JOHN BURNS 
 
 But there was no such charity amongst the con- 
 temporary Social Democrats. To them the Fair 
 Traders were the hired tools of the landed interest, 
 and they made their plans to utterly discredit them 
 with their alleged intended dupes. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 BURNS'S SPEECHES IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE 
 
 The outcome of the Trafalgar Square meeting on 
 8th February, 1885, was that Burns, Champion, 
 Hyndman, and Williams were brought to trial at 
 the Old Bailey on the 5th of April following, the 
 indictment charging them with Seditious Conspiracy. 
 
 Burns made a speech in his own defence, from 
 which I quote his version of what happened in the 
 Square. 
 
 " I heard," he said, " that there was going to be 
 a meeting of the starving unemployed of London 
 in Trafalgar Square, and that this meeting was 
 convened by four of the most infamous scoundrels 
 that ever wore boot-leather in the streets of London 
 — four men whose antecedents were bad, who were 
 prepared to trade on the misery of the poor pro- 
 vided their pockets were filled, who on the night 
 after the meeting were ejected from public-houses 
 in Fleet Street for drunkenness and disorderly 
 conduct. 
 
 " I reached the place at 1.30. I was recognised, 
 as I am very well known to the workmen of 
 London, by a large number of people who were 
 then present. They called on me for a speech. 
 
 " I declined to speak, and told them that when 
 the Fair Traders arrived, I would move an amend- 
 ment, and that if they declined to have the 
 amendment moved, I would hold a meeting of my 
 
52 JOHN BURNS 
 
 own. The crowd pushed me towards the lower part 
 of the Square, and hoisted me on to the platform. 
 
 " I then entered into a consultation with the 
 police. I told them that I had no desire to inter- 
 fere with their authority, that I would use what 
 influence I had over the crowd as a means of 
 securing a peaceful meeting, and see that no pro- 
 perty was damaged. Superintendent Dunlap, in 
 the exercise of a wise discretion, allowed me to 
 speak. 
 
 "Our meeting at the Nelson Column was satis- 
 factorily conducted. Quietness and order prevailed. 
 After speaking I called on several whom I recog- 
 nised in the crowd, and resolutions were submitted 
 to about 20,000 persons, for by this time the crowd 
 had considerably augmented. No damage was 
 done. There was no conflict with the police. We 
 avoided that, as Superintendent Dunlap admits. 
 
 " When the Fair Traders came, I climbed up the 
 balustrade, and acted as chairman of that second 
 meeting. All know that the Fair Traders, Messrs. 
 Peters, Kelly, Kenny, Lemon, and others are 
 regarded as arrant impostors by the workmen of 
 London, and I was desirous that there should 
 not be a physical conflict between the unemployed 
 and those honest but misguided men who are the 
 dupes of these bogus representatives. 
 
 "The day of these mercenaries, I am pleased to 
 say, is now over. The penalty for betraying the 
 workers, I hope, will be heavy enough to deter 
 any man from selling their cause, as it has many 
 times been sold. 
 
 " My speech was substantially what the witnesses 
 had said — that laws should be passed that the 
 Government should provide work for skilled and 
 unskilled labourers ; that the principles of Socialism 
 recognised to-day by the State in regard to sewage 
 farms and waterworks, railways, post-offices and 
 
SPEECHES IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE 53 
 
 telegraphs, should be further extended ; and that 
 in so far as they were extended, it would conduce 
 to the well-being of the community, of which the 
 unemployed in Trafalgar Square are a more im- 
 portant part than the club loungers think they are. 
 Is it revolution to demand that the workers should 
 be allowed to live like men ? Was it sedition for 
 a man to ask his brothers to combine ? If so, 
 sedition of that kind was going to be very 
 popular in the near future. 
 
 " The meeting passed off satisfactorily, I found 
 that the crowd were becoming somewhat turbulent 
 in consequence of the Fair Traders' platforms being 
 upset, and I thought it my duty to listen to the sug- 
 gestion which was made to me from many quarters 
 that we should proceed in procession through the 
 West End to Hyde Park." 
 
 That is Burns's own version of what happened 
 in Trafalgar Square, and it naturally slurs over the 
 particular expressions for the use of which he 
 was indicted. 
 
 But it is necessary to put them in evidence 
 here, or the picture of what Burns really was at 
 that time would be misleading and inaccurate. 
 
 Burns omitted to tell how, when he was 
 "pushed towards the lower part of the Square" 
 by the crowd, which, "hoisted him on to the 
 platform," he was waving a red flag, and was 
 accompanied by Champion. Nor does he mention 
 that he and Champion were ultimately removed 
 from the plinth by the police, nor how he then 
 carried the red flag across the Square, and was 
 still waving it when he climbed the balustrade in 
 front of the National Gallery,' from which the 
 second meeting was addressed. 
 
 But the facts are that he and Champion were 
 there joined by Jack Williams and Hyndman, and 
 that all four delivered speeches which, whatever 
 
54 JOHN BURNS 
 
 their message, were very different in tone to the 
 constitutional address described by Burns. 
 
 Burns, in opening the meeting, declared that he 
 and his friends of the Revolutionary Social Demo- 
 cratic League were not there to oppose the agita- 
 tion for the unemployed, but they were there to 
 prevent the people being made the tools of the 
 paid agitators who were working in the interests 
 of the Fair Trade League. 
 
 He went on to denounce the House of Commons 
 as composed of capitalists who had fattened on the 
 labour of the working men, and in this category 
 he included landlords, railway directors, and em- 
 ployers, who, he said, were no more likely to 
 legislate in the interests of the working men than 
 were the wolves to labour for the lambs. 
 
 To hang these people, he said, would be to 
 waste good rope, and as no good to the people 
 was to be expected from these "representatives," 
 there must be a revolution to alter the present 
 state of things. 
 
 The people who were out of work, he continued, 
 did not want relief, but justice. From whom should 
 they get justice ? From such as the Duke of West- 
 minster and his class, or the capitalists in the House 
 of Commons and their class. 
 
 No relief or justice would come from them. 
 
 The working men had now the vote conferred 
 upon them. What for ? To turn one party out 
 and put the other in ? Were they going to be 
 content with that while their wives and children 
 wanted food ? 
 
 When the people of France demanded food, the 
 rich laughed at those they called the " men in 
 blouses," but the heads of those who laughed 
 soon decorated the lamp-posts. 
 
 Here the leaders of the Revolutionary Demo- 
 cratic League wanted to settle affairs peaceably 
 
SPEECHES IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE 55 
 
 if they could ; but if not, they would not shrink 
 from revolution. 
 
 Champion was the first speaker to be called 
 upon by Burns. He proposed a resolution to 
 the effect that the Government should be called 
 upon to start public works, and especially to 
 build industrial dwellings. 
 
 Jack Williams seconded the resolution, and 
 declaimed against what he termed the Fair Trade 
 agitation ; the workers would get all they wanted 
 if they would only efficiently organise themselves. 
 
 Hyndman was called on to support the resolu- 
 tion. 
 
 That, he said, was not the first time that the 
 unemployed had met in Trafalgar Square. He 
 remembered a similar demonstration twenty years 
 ago, and one ten years ago. 
 
 How long, he asked, did they intend to allow 
 that state of things to go on ? They had the 
 matter in their own hands. They were asked to 
 be moderate. How could they be moderate when 
 they were out of work ? 
 
 "Look," he cried, "at those clubs," pointing 
 towards Pall Mall. What did the members of 
 those clubs care for their distress ? 
 
 Where were their Members of Parliament that 
 day ? They were sitting comfortably in their 
 clubs, not caring a straw whether the people 
 starved or not. 
 
 Shame on the people for not resisting their 
 oppressors ! If a few thousand persons had the 
 pluck of a few individuals they would soon alter 
 that state of things. 
 
 But what happened ? 
 
 Men in work were against men out of work. 
 They should all stand together as working classes 
 against the plundering classes, but, instead of com- 
 bining, they fought with one another. 
 
56 JOHN BURNS 
 
 The Social Democrats were ready to lead ; would 
 they follow ? 
 
 Do not, he concluded, ask for charity ; ask for 
 the land and the machinery of England, which 
 were theirs, and made valuable by their labour. 
 They had no other hope except from revolution. 
 
 Burns then closed the meeting, and, in doing so, 
 delivered another address — the third that afternoon. 
 
 The next time, he said, that the unemployed met 
 it would be to go and sack the bakers' shops in the 
 West End of London. 
 
 They had had too much talk. It was time the 
 men of England — and there were one and a half 
 millions out of work — did something else beside talk. 
 
 As a Revolutionist, he said, it was better to die 
 fighting than starving. 
 
 The next time they met it would not be to speak, 
 but to take the wealth of which they had been 
 robbed. 
 
 When they did that, would those who would join 
 them hold up their hands ? 
 
 In response to this appeal a large number of 
 hands were raised. 
 
 Burns then pointed to the Fair Trade platforms, 
 and said the men there were paid agitators, who 
 lived on their poverty, but the Social Democrats 
 were men who would bear the responsibility of 
 their words and actions. 
 
 And then it was that Burns, still carrying the 
 red flag, and waving it wildly, led off the excited 
 crowd through Clubland in the direction of Hyde 
 Park. 
 
 What happened on the way, and what was said 
 in the Park, remains to be told. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE RIOTS IN THE WEST END 
 
 Following the course taken in describing the 
 occurrences in Trafalgar Square, I will allow Burns 
 himself to give his version of what happened on 
 the way to Hyde Park. 
 
 " I would," he said, " call the Attorney-General's 
 attention to this significant fact, supported by the 
 whole of the evidence — and that is that no damage 
 was done by the procession from the time we left 
 Trafalgar Square until we reached the Carlton 
 Club. 
 
 "And what was the initial cause of the damage 
 being done ? 
 
 " Probably you, gentlemen of the jury, have not 
 been in so many demonstrations and processions 
 as I have, but if you would consult the working 
 classes who think on political subjects, and who 
 have attended large mass meetings in Hyde Park, 
 you would find, on investigation, that there is a 
 class of men who make it a practice, on occa- 
 sions of political demonstrations, to laugh and 
 jeer, from their club windows, at the poverty of 
 what they term "the great unwashed," to jeer 
 at the misery their own greed has created, and 
 yet these very men at election times crave the 
 votes of those who had previously received their 
 sneers. 
 
 " The crowd were not in a temper to stand even 
 
 57 
 
58 JOHN BURNS 
 
 mere jeering, and they were not disposed to re- 
 spond to contemptuous jeers by a smile. 
 
 " And what was the result ? Stone-throwing 
 commenced. And that was the result of the stupid, 
 ungentlemanly, criminal conduct of the Carlton 
 Club members. 
 
 " I did my best to repress the stone-throwing, 
 instead of inciting the crowd, believing, as I do, 
 that window-breaking, except perhaps as a warning, 
 is useless to effect a change in our system of 
 society based as it is on the robbery of labour. 
 I did everything, as the evidence proved — as you 
 have heard said — that was in my power to conduct 
 the procession as peacefully as possible to Hyde 
 Park, where it was my intention to call on them 
 to disperse. 
 
 "The stupidity of the members of the Carlton 
 decided otherwise. 
 
 "The stone-throwing continued to Hyde Park, 
 but not consecutively. It ceased between the 
 Carlton and the Thatched House at the bottom 
 of St. James's Street, and very little damage was 
 done between those places, as by this time I was 
 able to exercise some influence in keeping the 
 men quiet. That part of the route is a proof that 
 we did exercise our influence and control in a 
 proper direction. 
 
 " But at the Thatched House the contemptuous 
 jeering was renewed. It was more vehement than 
 at the Carlton ; and from the Thatched House 
 right up to St. James's Street and down Piccadilly, 
 riot — if you define 'riot' as the breaking of 
 windows — was supreme. I was unable to check 
 it. The fault was not mine, 
 
 "We reached Hyde Park. 
 
 " I got on the Achilles statue and called upon 
 the workmen to discontinue the violent outrages 
 which had taken place, as it was not by window- 
 
THE RIOTS IN THE WEST END 59 
 
 breaking that an intelligent reorganisation of 
 society could be brought about. The main body 
 agreed with me. 
 
 " Some hot-headed ones shouted out, and asked 
 that they might be led against the soldiers. 
 
 " I object to be saddled with speeches such as 
 the 'bread and lead' phrase, and the 'powder 
 and shot' interjections made by men in the crowd 
 at Hyde Park. Mr. Champion and I directed our 
 replies in response to those suggestions. 
 
 " And what was the result ? 
 
 "The crowd at the Achilles statue quietly dis- 
 persed. And we have it on the authority of the 
 police themselves that although some from the 
 meeting did go into South Audley Street, and 
 there was rioting there, it was not due to our 
 speeches, ■ because the damage and rioting took 
 place contemporaneously with our speeches at 
 the Achilles statue." 
 
 It will be admitted that Burns made out a good 
 case, but, of course, he could not be everywhere 
 and see everything, and now that we had his 
 version, I will give mine. 
 
 When I state that eventually between ^8000 and 
 ;£90oo had to be paid by the authorities to com- 
 pensate for the damage done, it will be evident that 
 the riot was a most serious one. 
 
 But it would be manifestly unfair to say that 
 the damage was done by the Social Democrats in 
 the procession. 
 
 In addition to the Social Democrats there was 
 a very large admixture of those disorderly and 
 dishonest elements who always gather to take 
 advantage of any excitement going on. 
 
 Burns, Champion, Hyndman, and Williams were 
 in the van of the procession, and with them were 
 many other less well-known Comrades, but the 
 bulk of the crowd was composed of the unem- 
 
6o JOHN BURNS 
 
 ployed who had gathered to Hsten to the Fair 
 Traders, and the disorderly contingent previously 
 referred to. 
 
 As the crowd passed through Waterloo Place 
 they picked up the stones lying loose between the 
 United Service and the Athenaeum Clubs. 
 
 They had their ammunition ready when they 
 reached the Carlton, and, while it is true that the 
 members of the Carlton jeered as described by 
 Burns, it is possible that the stone-throwing would 
 have commenced at the Carlton in any case. 
 
 Leaving the Carlton, where only one or two 
 windows were broken, the crowd passed the 
 Reform, the Beaconsfield, and the Marlborough 
 without doing any damage. 
 
 The Service Club, however, at the bottom of 
 St. James's Street, was hotly peppered, as was also 
 the Thatched House. 
 
 Brooks's and the New University Club were 
 severely bombarded, the great panes in the middle 
 being completely smashed out of their frames. 
 
 White's and Boodles, aristocratic resorts, were 
 passed over, but the Devonshire, where a large 
 number of Liberal and Radical M.P.'s and Parlia- 
 mentary candidates resorted, was bombarded for 
 several minutes. 
 
 The double windows were broken and the stones 
 penetrated, rattling through the reading room and 
 smoking room. 
 
 Leaving Clubland, the crowd, which had by 
 this time got quite out of hand, began to break 
 the windows in the tradesmen's shops. 
 
 All the windows on the south side of Piccadilly, 
 from the General Stock Exchange at the corner 
 of St. James's Street to Green Park, were so badly 
 smashed that most of the tradesmen had to put 
 up their shutters. 
 
 Immediately the crowd came to the Park they 
 
THE RIOTS IN THE WEST END 6i 
 
 crossed over to the north side of Piccadilly, and 
 commenced breaking windows until Apsley House 
 was reached. 
 
 The windows of many private carriages in Picca- 
 dilly were also broken. 
 
 With regard to the speeches delivered at the 
 Achilles statue, I have already given Burns's 
 version of the gist of those made by himself and 
 Champion. 
 
 Hyndman and Williams also spoke, and Hynd- 
 man's speech may be quoted as an illustration of 
 the line taken by all the speakers. 
 
 Hyndman said that the leaders of the Social 
 Democratic Party regretted what had occurred in 
 St. James's Street and Piccadilly. 
 
 Those who threw the stones were probably the 
 agents of the enemy, who wished to bring the 
 Social Democrats into discredit. 
 
 But they felt certain that, sooner or later, if 
 steps were not taken to remove the real causes of 
 the distress, force would have to be resorted to. 
 
 The leaders of the Social Democrats, however, 
 were not the men to call upon unarmed men to 
 run risks in collision with the police and soldiers. 
 
 The meeting then broke up. A crowd of about 
 500, preceded and followed by small detachments 
 of police, marched back to Trafalgar Square, and, 
 as they passed, the shopkeepers closed their 
 windows. 
 
 Meantime the Fair Traders, who claimed that 
 they were the representatives of the organised 
 trades, and said that seventy-four Unions had 
 sent delegates to the committee meetings at 
 which the demonstration had been arranged, had 
 dispersed. 
 
 The speakers had alluded generally to the great 
 distress which prevailed in consequence of the 
 want of employment, and then the resolution, of 
 
62 JOHN BURNS 
 
 which I gave a copy in a preceding chapter, was 
 put and declared unanimously carried. 
 
 And so ended the great day of the West End 
 riots, important as being the first occasion on 
 which the defenders of the existing order had 
 been confronted by the apostles of the Social 
 Revolution. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 I INTERVIEW HYNDMAN AND CHAMPION 
 
 The steps taken by the authorities are an eloquent 
 testimony to the alarm created by the riots in 
 the minds of the middle and upper classes. But 
 they had by no means a monopoly of alarm at 
 the moment. 
 
 The leaders of the Social Democratic Federation 
 were genuinely afraid of the Frankenstein that 
 had been raised. It was no part of their plan that 
 rioting should take place. What they desired was 
 to discountenance the Fair Traders, and to re- 
 pudiate their-claims to the leadership of working- 
 class opinion. 
 
 But they had so roused the indignation of the 
 people that the jeering of the club habitues had 
 been like applying a torch to a mass of gunpowder. 
 And there was a very serious danger that the 
 authorities would punish them — Messrs. Burns, 
 Hyndman, Champion, and Williams — for what was 
 really the fault of the men who assembled in the 
 club windows, and insulted the men in the pro- 
 cession. 
 
 We have already seen the line Hyndman took 
 in his Hyde Park speech. He was particularly 
 anxious to rebut the idea that the Social Demo- 
 cratic Federation speakers had incited the mob to 
 violence. And it occurred to me that, in my 
 capacity of journalist, I might be able to help by 
 presenting the Social Democratic Federation point 
 of view to the public. 
 
64 JOHN BURNS 
 
 So when I called at the Pall Mall Gazette office to 
 turn in my report of the riots for that same evening's 
 latest edition, I suggested that I might be able to 
 get an " interview " with Hyndman for next day's 
 issue. I was immediately commissioned to do so. 
 
 " What the devil two men like Hyndman and 
 Champion are doing in such a galley passes my 
 comprehension," said the news editor. " Bring out 
 their side of the case as well as you can, but don't 
 forget," he added, "that your interrogatories will 
 be regarded as representative of the Pall Mall, and 
 don't commit the paper to any sympathy with 
 their mad ideas." 
 
 Accordingly I sought out Hyndman, and was 
 fortunate enough to find Champion with him. 
 
 If I quote freely from the interview, it is because 
 of its value as a contemporary record. It enables 
 us to realise, at this distance of time, the means 
 whereby the Social Democrats originally expected 
 the social revolution to come, and the form they 
 anticipated it would assume better than any de- 
 scriptive writing in which I might now indulge. 
 
 " Wc have had a great stroke of luck to-day," 
 said Mr. Hyndman, rubbing his hands joyfully, "a 
 great stroke of luck, indeed, and so unexpected." 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Champion, " none of us had any 
 idea this would happen." 
 
 "What \" said I, "do you mean to say that you 
 did not instigate the mob to break all the windows ? 
 I am assured," I went on, "that Mr. Hyndman, 
 Mr. Burns, and Mr. Champion were seen leading 
 on the mob to break all the windows in the clubs, 
 even if they did not throw the stones." 
 
 I put the matter bluntly in this way to enable 
 the Social Democrats to come out with a general 
 denial, and Mr. Hyndman quickly took advantage 
 of the opening. 
 
 "Nothing of the kind," said Mr. Hyndman. "So 
 
HYNDMAN AND CHAMPION 65 
 
 far from having instigated the attack on the clubs, 
 we did not even bring the people together to 
 Trafalgar Square. That was the work of the paid 
 agitators, Fair Traders, and the like, who collected 
 the unemployed in order to gain a rise for their 
 own particular nostrums. As they had got the 
 people together, we thought it a pity to allow so 
 good an opportunity to pass unutilised, so, having 
 the congregation provided for us, we inculcated 
 the Social Democratic doctrines, . with the result 
 that, as you saw, we had the whole meeting, and 
 they had nothing but the fringes." 
 
 "Then," said I, "the whole responsibility for 
 the outrages this afternoon lies upon Messrs. Kelly, 
 Peters, and others, who brought the crowd to- 
 gether ? " 
 
 "Precisely!" said Mr. Hyndman. "All we did 
 was simply to preach the true faith." 
 
 "Then you did not break the windows, loot the 
 shops, &c. ? " 
 
 "So far from that being the case," said Mr. 
 Champion, "if I had had a revolver, and seen the 
 mob looting the shops, I would have shot them 
 down right and left with my own hand. So far 
 as I know, only two shops were looted in Picca- 
 dilly — Dacres, the shirt shop, where several white 
 shirts were taken, which some of the crowd tried 
 to put on in Hyde Park, with curious effects. The 
 other was Raffini's Tonic Wine shop." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Hyndman. "I was very much 
 afraid the crowd had got hold of brandy, when I 
 saw them knocking off the heads of bottles, pouring 
 out the wine, and drinking right out of their hands. 
 There were tiers of hands, one below the other, 
 catching the wine as it was poured out, and 
 dripped from one hand to the other. But, with 
 that exception, I did not see any plundering. 
 Every carriage was surrounded on the road to 
 
 E 
 
66 JOHN BURNS 
 
 Hyde Park, and I much regret that a lady was 
 frightened who was driving in a barouche. That 
 was entirely contrary to our wishes. None of the 
 responsibility lies at our door. We simply did 
 what we have been doing for the last two years 
 and more, namely, set before the people what we 
 consider to be the only truth that could bring them 
 permanent and substantial relief. But we had no 
 idea that they would proceed at once to break 
 windows or indulge in any violence whatsoever. 
 The time for that is not yet come, in our opinion. 
 It must come, but this was premature, decidedly 
 premature." " By the way," continued Mr. Hynd- 
 man, " the club that was worse smashed than any 
 other happened to be the New University, which, 
 by a very curious, but accidental circumstance, was 
 the club from which I was expelled some time ago 
 for my Socialist tendencies. Not that that had 
 anything to do with it," he added, "because the 
 people knew nothing whatever about differences 
 between the clubs." 
 
 " What do you think will come out of it all ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Probably relief works," said Mr. Hyndman, 
 " that is if Mr. Chamberlain is the man he professes 
 to be. When Mr. Chamberlain was waited upon 
 by the people at Highbury, he feared to face them, 
 taking refuge in some back premises until the 
 people left the grounds, and possibly he may refuse 
 to meet a deputation from the people of London 
 in the same way. Should he do so, we shall wait 
 upon him where'er he takes his walks abroad, in 
 parks or public streets, and confront him with the 
 starving thousands of his fellow-countrymen." 
 
 "We shall ask Mr. Chamberlain three things," 
 said Mr. Champion. " First, whether he is person- 
 ally in favour of relief works being undertaken ; 
 Second, whether he will advise the Government to 
 
HYNDMAN AND CHAMPION 67 
 
 start such relief works ; and Thirdly, if so, can 
 he assure us that the Government will take his 
 demands into serious consideration. If he says 
 'Yes,' well and good, something will have been 
 done to relieve the distress of the working classes ; 
 if not " 
 
 " If not, what will you do ? " I asked. 
 
 "No one knows what we shall do," said Mr. 
 Hyndman impressively, " not even ourselves. Pro- 
 bably we shall disappear for some months, and then 
 you shall hear of us in a more serious fashion than 
 you have heard to-day. One thing is certain," 
 added Mr. Hyndman, " we dare not go back if we 
 would." 
 
 " Why dare you not go back ? " I said. 
 
 " Because," replied Mr. Hyndman, " I should be 
 killed if I did." 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense," said I. " Who would kill 
 you if you went back ? " 
 
 "I know," said Mr. Champion, "two men who 
 each might be guaranteed to kill Hyndman if he 
 sells the cause. We must go forward, whether we 
 like it or not. There is no retreat. We do not 
 care for our lives, and when you find a band of 
 resolute men who are willing to die in defence of 
 their cause, you may depend upon it this trouble 
 will not soon be overpast. Things are bad ; they 
 are getting worse, and every man who is out of 
 work, with wife and children hungry at home, is 
 ripe for our teaching. 
 
 " Yes," continued Mr. Champion, " you should 
 see how their eyes glisten when we tell them the 
 truth about Society. When we tell a man who has 
 not had any food all day and is starving and shiver- 
 ing with cold, that his suffering is due to the way 
 in which he has been plundered by the Capitalists ; 
 when we tell him that he has probably produced 
 ^10,000 value, and he has only received ^£1500 in 
 
68 JOHN BURNS 
 
 wages, and that the balance of ;^85oo is still due 
 from Society, he greedily drinks in the new gospel." 
 
 " And it is true," exclaimed Mr. Hyndman, " and 
 you cannot get over it. There is a great deal more 
 of that idea abroad than most people think, and 
 when once the idea is planted in the minds of the 
 working man that nothing can put him right except 
 an entire revolution of the existing order of Society, 
 they will not be easy to stop before they have made 
 a clean sweep of the classes who have fattened so 
 long upon the plunder of the people." 
 
 When the report of this interview was printed in 
 the Pall Mall, I don't think it had much effect 
 in reassuring the authorities. Whatever they may 
 have thought of the plea of non-responsibihty for 
 the riots, the feeling grew that it was necessary to 
 make an attempt to muzzle men like these. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE DEPUTATION TO MR. CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 The chief alarm that was felt about the West End 
 riots at the time they happened was that they were 
 associated with Hyndman and Champion, two men 
 belonging to the military and middle classes. The 
 ladies and gentlemen of Society felt that the founda- 
 tions of the social system were being shaken when 
 men whom they regarded as renegades from their . 
 caste were seen at the head of a mob that com- 
 mitted such serious damage to property. 
 
 It did not to them seem an anomaly that Burns, 
 who belonged to the artisan class, should take part 
 in such outrages. The anomaly in the case of 
 Burns arose at a later period of his development, 
 when he became a member of a Liberal Govern- 
 ment, and an out-and-out defender of the system 
 he attacked so vigorously in his Trafalgar Square 
 days. And it is this development of Burns that I 
 am attempting to trace in this story. It supplies a 
 psychological interest, and that interest also char- 
 acterises the careers of Hyndman and Champion. 
 
 It is very curious, at this distance of time, to look 
 back on the forces that have fought on the side 
 of progress, and those that rallied to the support 
 of the good old status quo. Many once working- 
 class leaders were either bought or converted into 
 determined opponents of their earlier teaching. 
 Conversely, many names could be cited of men 
 and women, who, cradled in all the prejudices of 
 
 69 
 
70 JOHN BURNS 
 
 caste, ultimately shook themselves free and fought 
 for the Democracy. 
 
 As it is the school of thought with which Hynd- 
 man and Champion were associated that is now 
 winning all along the line, it is the reputation of 
 those men, and others of the early pioneers which, 
 obscured for a time, is now most brightly shining. 
 Burns's more meteoric course completely eclipsed 
 theirs for years, but they have now come into their 
 kingdom, and all men do them honour. 
 
 So, while this story bears the name of John 
 Burns, and its immediate object is to trace his rise 
 and progress to the da2zling height of a Cabinet 
 post, I must devote some space to a study of the 
 career and actions of Henry Hyde Champion. 
 
 I submit that the character of a man who was 
 the first to finance John Burns when he contested 
 Nottingham in 1885, who rendered a similar service 
 to Keir Hardie when he first contested Mid-Lanark 
 in 1888, and who became one of the first mission- 
 aries of Socialism in Australia, is worthy of our 
 study, and that what Champion did in Great Britain 
 during the decade 1884-94 cannot be ignored in 
 any faithful account of those troubled years. 
 
 Personally, I feel that there is a duty incum- 
 bent upon me in this connection, because I came 
 to be in the nineties a determined opponent of 
 Champion's methods. Just now, however, I am 
 only concerned to indicate the one defect in 
 Champion that was responsible for his rupture 
 with British Socialism. 
 
 Champion could not eradicate from the fibre of 
 his being the fruit of the early influences under 
 which he was educated. 
 
 He brought with him into the Socialist movement 
 the ideas imbibed during his career in the army, 
 and in the environment surrounding him during 
 his training for that vocation. 
 
DEPUTATION TO MR. CHAMBERLAIN 71 
 
 Note, in this connection, those passages in the 
 Pall Mall interview in which Champion's declara- 
 tions are recorded, and especially his avowal that 
 he would have shot the looters down right and left 
 had he seen them plundering. That is the attitude 
 of the ex-artillery officer ; no man who had been 
 brought up amongst the poor would have made 
 such an avowal. 
 
 It was this dragooning spirit that ultimately 
 provoked the British Socialists into opposition to 
 Champion, and that, coupled with a breakdown in 
 health, brought about his exile to Australia. 
 
 I think it well to put on the record at this point 
 the one trait that made it ultimately impossible for 
 British Socialists to work with him in these islands, 
 and now I may go on to detail the incidents that 
 closely followed on the riots. 
 
 On Tuesday, the day after the riots, I accompanied 
 the four Social Democratic leaders to Whitehall, 
 where they went to seek an interview with Mr. 
 Chamberlain, then the President of the Local 
 Government Board, the office subsequently, after 
 an interval of nineteen years, bestowed upon John 
 Burns. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain declined to see the deputation 
 personally, but intimated that he was willing to 
 receive any communication in writing. 
 
 Thereupon Mr. Hyndman wrote out the " Nature 
 of their Business " on an interview memorandum. 
 
 The memorandum stated that they had called 
 upon Mr. Chamberlain in order to be able to inform 
 the public meeting of Unemployed, which they 
 would address in the course of a few days, what 
 Mr. Chamberlain, as President of the Local 
 Government Board, intended to do in view of 
 the hundreds and thousands of starving men in 
 London and other parts of the country. 
 
 With the memorandum was sent up a copy of 
 
72 JOHN BURNS 
 
 the resolutions passed at the meeting in Trafalgar 
 Square, to which was added a statement that 
 pressure on the local authorities had entirely failed 
 of effect, and that their letters to the Local Govern- 
 ment Board had remained unanswered. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain's answer, which was shortly 
 afterwards given in writing, was as follows : — 
 
 " Mr. Chamberlain has received the copy of the 
 resolutions passed at a meeting in Trafalgar Square. 
 He does not think that the remedies proposed by 
 the Social Democratic Federation would be effec- 
 tual, and he is unable, therefore, to promise any 
 support to them. At the same time he is making 
 independent inquiries into the extent and character 
 of the distress, and all applications from Local 
 Authorities in correspondence with the Local 
 Government Board will receive immediate attention. 
 In every case where the circumstances require it, 
 and where they do not already possess powers, the 
 Boards of Guardians will be at once authorised to 
 give outdoor relief when arrangements are made 
 for a labour test sufficient to prevent imposture." 
 
 Before Mr. Chamberlain's answer was received, 
 Burns and Williams had left. Hyndman and 
 Champion, however, drafted a reply, in which 
 they stated that they were by no means satisfied. 
 
 As for the independent inquiry, that, they pointed 
 out, would only mean more delay, and delay was 
 not what starving people would care for. 
 
 The promise of outdoor relief, they said, was 
 marred by several things, and chiefly by the labour 
 test. What the men wanted was honest, useful 
 work, and not a system of doles, accompanied by a 
 servile, degrading test. 
 
 Moreover, the ratepayer was poor, especially in 
 Holborn and Clerkenwell, where so much distress 
 existed, and the Guardians would soon find their 
 resources unequal to the demands for outdoor relief. 
 
DEPUTATION TO MR. CHAMBERLAIN 73 
 
 This was on the Tuesday. On the Wednesday 
 there was a development of the situation in the 
 shape of a demand from the Fair Traders that 
 Hyndman, Burns, Champion, and Williams should 
 be arrested. 
 
 This demand was voiced at a meeting of the 
 Organising Committee of the Fair Trade Demon- 
 stration. The Chairman of the Committee roundly 
 charged the Social Democrats with having incited 
 the scum of the Metropolis to pillage and plunder 
 the shops of the West End tradesmen. 
 
 The mob, he said, who did that disgraceful work 
 were not working men. He was surprised the 
 authorities had not yet arrested Messrs. Burns, 
 Hyndman, Champion, and Williams, but they had 
 better do their duty, or else the unemployed 
 working men of London would take the matter 
 in their own hands. 
 
 Simultaneously there arose a general outcry in 
 the Press for the arrest and prosecution of the 
 Social Democratic leaders, modified in some 
 quarters by the fear that that would be a welcome 
 advertisement for the Socialists. 
 
 The News Editor of the Pal/ Mai/ held that view, 
 and he sent me to obtain another interview with 
 Mr. Hyndman, in which I was to get his opinion 
 on that point. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HYNDMAN IN DIPLOMATIC AND BURNS IN 
 DEFIANT MOOD 
 
 When I saw Mr. Hyndman he was quite willing 
 to talk, though rather indignant at the idea that 
 the Social Democrats would welcome a prosecu- 
 tion for the advertisement it would give to their 
 plans. 
 
 " That is not true," he said energetically. " We 
 do not wish in the least to pose as martyrs, and 
 we don't hanker after the advertisement. The 
 present is no time to prosecute us. The oppor- 
 tunity of Monday was not of our seeking, but 
 we took advantage of it exactly as we shall take 
 advantage of the opportunity offered by a pro- 
 secution." 
 
 "But," I said, following out my instructions, "is 
 not the Socialist movement a one-man movement, 
 and if you are arrested, convicted, and laid by the 
 heels for a year, would it not collapse ? " 
 
 "Too late," replied Mr. Hyndman, with a smile. 
 " On the contrary, it would spread and gain vigour 
 just as a shrub does when you lop off one of its 
 top shoots. There is only one way to kill the 
 Socialist movement, pull it up by the roots. 
 Remove the cause of it, the state of things in 
 the social body that nourishes it, and it will die ; 
 not otherwise. I dare say my absence would be 
 felt, but the general vigour that would be infused 
 into the whole body would much more than com- 
 pensate for it." 
 
HYNDMAN AND BURNS 75 
 
 The demand for prosecution resulted in the issue 
 of summonses on the Saturday, 13th February, made 
 returnable on the 17th, and on that day the police 
 inquiry began before Sir James Ingram, at Bow 
 Street. At the close of the day the hearing was 
 adjourned for a week, bail being allowed the 
 defendants. 
 
 William Morris stood bail for Burns and Cham- 
 pion, ;Mr. Joseph Cowen, M.P., for Hyndman, 
 and Belfort Bax for Williams. At the adjourned 
 hearing the defendants were committed for trial at 
 the Old Bailey. 
 
 On Sunday, 21st February, while he was on bail 
 from the Police Court, Burns addressed a meeting 
 in Hyde Park. The speech he then delivered 
 indicates his defiant mood at that time. 
 
 Speaking in support of a resolution, " recognising 
 fully that no permanent good will result for the 
 working class until the workers themselves are 
 organised sufficiently to overthrow the present 
 system of economical and social oppression by 
 taking into their own hands the land, machinery, 
 and capital, and all means of production, to be used 
 for the benefit of the entire labouring community," 
 Burns said " That as he was beneath the protection 
 of the law, he must of necessity be extremely 
 moderate. He wanted that demonstration that day 
 to be peaceable and orderly. He wanted them, 
 when the meeting was over, to go quietly home. 
 Let them not loot shops, let them not thieve any- 
 thing, let them not take their ransom prematurely. 
 
 " They had been told by the Capitalist Press that 
 they were 'the tag-rag and bob-tail.' The 'tag- 
 rag and bob-tail ' were there, not in the streets, but 
 on the other side of the club windows. That was 
 the odium that had ever been cast upon them by 
 the men who lived on the proceeds of their labour. 
 When moral worth was the standard by which 
 
76 JOHN BURNS 
 
 society would be recognised, who would be the 
 'tag-rag and bob-tail ' then ? 
 
 " It was stated that they (the SociaHsts) would 
 have meted out to them the sternest justice. They 
 were told there was equality before the law. What 
 was the law that day? His advice to those men 
 who thought that demonstration was a means 
 by which they could improve their material 
 position was that if they wanted to get on in life 
 they should not work honestly, because society 
 to-day remunerated her labourers in an inverse 
 ratio to the wealth they produced. Why, if they 
 thieved to-day they would get locked-up. Six 
 months for stealing a turnip or a potato, when 
 famine forced them to commit a theft ; but let them 
 steal a thousand acres, and they would get a peerage. 
 
 " He was indicted for sedition. What was 
 sedition ? It was a very vague, elastic charge ; but 
 if he was inciting to sedition in advocating a social 
 revolution, then he said sedition would have to be 
 his charge until the grave claimed him. 
 
 " Lord Randolph Churchill said the people of 
 London were never in earnest until park railings 
 came down and windows were broken. They were 
 told by Mr. Chamberlain that the day was come 
 when property should be ransomed to those from 
 whom the property had been stolen. He did not 
 want — the proletariat of London did not want — to 
 take their ransom at an inappropriate time. What 
 they wanted now was to impress upon the people 
 the fact that in society to-day the seeds of a bloody 
 revolution were germinating. 
 
 " He wanted to call their attention to the ebulli- 
 tion of popular indignation of last Monday week — 
 that was what he called it. The society papers 
 called it a bloodthirsty riot — he did not. They had 
 been told that it had stemmed the tide of charity. 
 He wanted the tide of charity dammed altogether. 
 
HYNDMAN AND BURNS 77 
 
 If last Monday week's demonstration stemmed the 
 tide of charity, that and other demonstrations would 
 open up the floodgates of justice, and inequality 
 must cease. They did not want charity ; they 
 wanted work, justice, and no non-producers. He 
 was inclined to think they would get it if they were 
 determined. 
 
 "They had been told that they did not respect 
 the fundamental law of the English Constitution. 
 He said necessity knew no law. Poverty was not 
 appeased by windy resolutions. 
 
 " Why did hungry men commit violence ? Was 
 it because they were inherently vicious ? No, but 
 because they saw before them idlers enjoying the 
 wealth they had produced. 
 
 "Why was it that every now and then those 
 revolts took place ? Because their middle classes 
 were unable to manage the present position. He 
 spoke prophetically a fortnight ago in Trafalgar 
 Square ; he was going to do so then. If the 
 Government did not comply with their demands, 
 worse than what they had seen throughout the 
 world must of necessity happen. 
 
 " What was their Houses of Parliament for ? 
 Was it for bolstering up the privileges of the rich 
 or for benefiting the whole of the people of Great 
 Britain ? He wanted the nation to be benefited, 
 and not a clique. He wanted the producers of 
 wealth to have the full value of what they created. 
 
 "That was revolution. Revolution implied a 
 complete change, whether peaceful or forcible, and 
 he asked every one to support the resolution, and 
 in doing so give three hearty cheers for the Social 
 Revolution." 
 
 Three cheers were then given, Burns waving a 
 red flag as fugleman. 
 
 Burns concluded by urging his audience not to 
 forget that every attempt would be made to bring a 
 
78 JOHN BURNS 
 
 conviction against them. Let them not forget that 
 some of them might see the inside of a prison cell. 
 
 " Supposing that were so, prosecutions gave a 
 fillip to all movements. Prosecutions made martyrs, 
 martyrs made converts, and all that meant that the 
 cause of the people was won. 
 
 " What cared they for prosecutions ? Death, the 
 prison, had no terrors for them, because through 
 Capitalism life had lost all its charms. 
 
 "What cared they for the authorities who get 
 their power purely from the right of private owner- 
 ship, by which they might not live ? 
 
 "They had put their hands to the plough; they 
 did not intend to go back until the people's cause 
 was won, and a life worth living was handed on 
 to future generations." 
 
 This tone was maintained at the Old Bailey trial — 
 which lasted six days, from the 5th to the loth 
 April inclusive — by all the defendants, as excerpts 
 from their speeches would show. What was said 
 by Hyndman and Burns will suffice. 
 
 Hyndman, who defended himself, said "had 
 it been necessary he could have called hosts of 
 witnesses as to character, and to prove that he was 
 not likely to aid in looting shops. It was unneces- 
 sary to do so, because the great social work in which 
 he was engaged would have been greatly injured by 
 such action. 
 
 "As to their position in the dock, he, with his 
 co-defendants, really felt it an honour, for they 
 appeared as representatives of a great social and 
 national movement. 
 
 " The real root of the prosecution was that the 
 Government was instigated by the Grand Viziers on 
 the Continent, who thought that too great freedom 
 was allowed to the people of England, and that it 
 might prove dangerous to Continental nations. 
 
 " He had found the condition of the people in 
 
HYNDMAN AND BURNS 79 
 
 this and other countries was worse than that of 
 slavery and savagery, thus proving that there was a 
 deep social question that had to be solved, and it 
 was to help to solve that problem that he and the 
 other defendants had spent their money and leisure." 
 But it was Burns who struck the highest note in 
 his speech to the jury, as I will show in my next 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 BURNS'S SPEECH AT THE OLD BAILEY 
 
 I have already given quotations from Burns's speech 
 dealing with matters of fact. What follows is a 
 verbatim report of the passages dealing with the 
 indictment for sedition. He defended himself, 
 but was advised on points of law by Mr. W. M. 
 Thompson, barrister, afterwards editor of Reynolds's. 
 
 Burns said : — " My Lords and Gentlemen of the 
 Jury: 
 
 " As an unemployed worker, and a Social 
 Democrat, I am placed in a somewhat peculiar 
 position in this case. I expected when I was of 
 the age of sixteen or seventeen that, at some time of 
 my life, I should be brought face to face with 
 the authorities for vindicating the class to which 
 I belong. 
 
 " Since I was sixteen years of age I have done 
 everything in my power to benefit the workers 
 in a straightforward way. I have deprived myself, 
 as many of my class have done, of hundreds of 
 meals on purpose to buy books and papers to see if 
 we could not by peaceful consultation, by deliberate 
 and calm organisation, do what I am inclined to 
 think the middle and upper classes by their neglect, 
 apathy, and indiflference, will compel artisans to do 
 otherwise than peacefully. 
 
 " I plead ' Not Guilty,' my Lord, to the charge of 
 sedition, particularly to the charge of seditious 
 conspiracy. I plead not guilty, not to deny the 
 
BURNS'S SPEECH AT THE OLD BAILEY 8i 
 
 words I used on 8th February, or any other words 
 I ever used, but simply because the language I used 
 on that occasion had no guilt or sedition in it. I 
 expressed the virtuous indignation against the misery 
 and injustice of a man who had from his earliest 
 infancy up to the present moment struggled and 
 worked hard to support his wife and an aged 
 mother, both of whom would instantly repudiate 
 me if I were to go back from one single statement 
 that I made on 8th February. I pointed out the 
 steps that were necessary for a peaceful solution of 
 the difficulties which the industrial classes have to 
 encounter, and which press so hardly on the lower 
 classes of society — as they are falsely called. I 
 pointed out how the unequal incidence of taxation 
 pressed upon shopkeepers and others, and how the 
 capitalists and the rich were able to tide over the 
 difficulties. 
 
 " Against this system of society I frankly confess 
 I am a rebel, because society has outlawed me. I 
 have protested against this state of society by which 
 at present one and a half millions of our fellow- 
 countrymen, adult males, are starving — starving 
 because they have not work to do. 
 
 " I had very strong feelings upon this matter of 
 the unemployed, particularly on the day in question, 
 when we were brought face to face with men who 
 for month after month had trod the street in search 
 of work, with men whom I knew were honest ; 
 whose only crime was that they let the idler enjoy 
 that which the producer alone should have— not 
 loafers and thieves — but the real unemployed of 
 our nation city. Talk about strong language ! I 
 contend my language was mild when you consider 
 the usage they have received, and that the patience, 
 under severe provocation, displayed by the workers, 
 is almost slavish and cowardly. 
 
 " Now what have we done ? We have pursued 
 
 F 
 
82 JOHN BURNS 
 
 the same course for the last five years. These are 
 remarkable defendants who stand in this box. 
 
 "There must be some unusual agitation to 
 prompt one of the idle classes like Mr. Champion, 
 a skilled artisan like myself, an unskilled labourer 
 like Mr. Williams, and a middle-class man like Mr. 
 Hyndman, to stand in this box for one simple 
 cause. There must be something unusual to bring 
 us here. 
 
 " We have gained nothing by this agitation ; on the 
 contrary, we have lost what material well-being we 
 had, and we come before you not as paid agitators 
 pecuniarily interested in creating riots, tumults, and 
 disturbances, but men anxious to change the exist- 
 ing system of society to one in which men should 
 receive the full value of their labour, in which 
 society will be regarded as something more than a 
 few titled nonproducers who take the whole of the 
 wealth which the useful workers alone produce. 
 
 "We are indicted for seditious conspiracy. If 
 it were not so serious a charge in itself, it would be 
 enough to raise a smile. Seditious conspiracy 1 
 Why, if there is one thing that the Whigs, Radicals, 
 and the Tory Party accuse us of it is this — that we 
 have brought these questions — and we are the first 
 who have done it— into the open street ! When we 
 are again accused of conspiracy it will be when all 
 open methods of securing redress have been tried 
 and have failed. 
 
 " If you want to remove the cause of seditious 
 speeches you must prevent us from having to hear, 
 as we hear to-day, of hungry, poverty-stricken men 
 who from no fault of their own are compelled to be 
 out of work, who are fit subjects for revolutionary 
 appeals. If you want to remove a seditious 
 agitation, as it is called, you must remove, not the 
 effect, but the cause of such agitation. 
 
 " We are not responsible for the riots ; it is 
 
BURNS'S SPEECH AT THE OLD BAILEY 83 
 
 society that is responsible, and instead of the 
 Attorney-General drawing up indictments against 
 us, he should be drawing up indictments against 
 society, which is responsible for neglecting the 
 means at its command. 
 
 " I have not one single word of regret to utter 
 for the part I have taken in this agitation. If my 
 language was strong, the occasion demanded strong 
 language. I say we cannot have in England, as we 
 have to-day, five millions living on the verge of 
 pauperism without gross discontent. Well-fed men 
 never revolt. Poverty-stricken men have all to 
 gain, and nothing to lose, by riot and revolution. 
 
 "There is a time, I take it — and such is the 
 present, a time of exceptional depression — when it 
 is necessary for men, particularly for the working 
 classes, to speak out in strong language as to the 
 demands of their fellows ; and I contend it would 
 be immoral, cowardly, and criminal to the last 
 degree if I, having what little power I possess to 
 interpret the wishes of my fellow-workers, were 
 not to use every public occasion for ventilating 
 the grievances of those who, from no fault of their 
 own, are unable to ventilate them themselves. 
 
 "That meeting of 8th February called the attention 
 of the people of Great Britain to this fact — that 
 below the upper and middle strata of society there 
 were millions of people living hard, degraded 
 lives — men who were forced to live as they do, but 
 who would, if possible, work and live virtuous 
 lives — men who through the unequal distribution of 
 wealth are consigned to the criminal classes, and 
 women into the enormous army of prostitutes, 
 whom we see in the streets of our large cities, 
 
 "And, as an artisan, I cannot see poor, puny, 
 little babes sucking empty breasts, and honest men 
 walking the streets for four months at a time — I 
 cannot hear of women of the working classes being 
 
84 JOHN BURNS 
 
 compelled to prostitution to earn a livelihood — I 
 cannot see these things without being moved not 
 only to strong language, but to strong action, if 
 necessary. 
 
 " Society journals demand our imprisonment. 
 Why? Because ;^ii,ooo worth of windows have 
 been broken. But how about the sacred human 
 lives that have been, and are, degraded and blighted 
 by the present system of capitalism ? 
 
 " I am prepared to stand by what I said on that 
 day. If I go to prison (as I think very doubtful) I 
 shall serve my cause, as Mr. Champion has said, as 
 well inside the prison as out. 
 
 " The word prison has no particular terrors for 
 me. Through the present system of society life 
 has lost all its charm, and a hungry man said truly 
 (as Isaiah said in the Holy Book) that there was a 
 time in the history of our lives when it was better 
 to die in prison, or better to die fighting than to die 
 starving. 
 
 " As the holy man said of old, so millions of men 
 are thinking at the present moment ; and if the 
 governing classes want to bring on a revolution by 
 force, such as has been mentioned by the counsel 
 for the prosecution, they will find it come more 
 speedily, and with more violence, if they deny to 
 the poor men of England (who are too poor to pay 
 for halls) the right to express their grievances and 
 opinions in public meetings in the open air, and I 
 would ask the jury, as they are for the moment the 
 guardians of the right of free speech, as they have 
 an opportunity in the present instance of laying 
 down a good or bad precedent, I ask them in the 
 interests of justice, particularly in the interests of 
 the great mass of poverty-stricken men and women 
 in this country, not to allow this opportunity 
 to pass without stigmatising by their verdict as 
 absurd, stupid, and frivolous, the prosecution that 
 
BURNS'S SPEECH AT THE OLD BAILEY 85 
 
 has been brought against us by Her Majesty's 
 Government." 
 
 On the jury returning to the Court, the foreman 
 said they acquitted Messrs. Hyndman and WilHams, 
 and with regard to the other two defendants, he was 
 desired to say the jury are of opinion that the lan- 
 guage of Messrs. Burns and Champion was highly 
 inflammatory, and greatly to be condemned ; but 
 on the whole of the facts laid before them, they 
 acquitted those two defendants of seditious intent. 
 
 The Judge : " That, gentlemen, is a verdict of 
 ' Not Guilty.' " 
 
 And thus ended, to his great credit and glory, 
 the first State trial of John Burns. One year and 
 eight months later, on i6th January 1888, Burns 
 again figured in the dock at the Old Bailey, in com- 
 pany with R. B. Cunninghame Graham, M.P. In 
 the interval, two Trades Congresses, those of 1886 
 and 1887, at which the Labour Electoral Association 
 was projected and established, had been held. At 
 the latter of these Congresses, Keir Hardie made 
 his debut as a Labour Leader, and by the time 
 Graham and Burns stood in the dock at the Old 
 Bailey, Hardie, Graham, and Champion, had become 
 associated in a Scottish triumvirate which resulted 
 in the estabhshment of the Scottish Labour Party 
 in 1889. 
 
 This is a chain of events which had great influence 
 in determining Burns' s ultimate development, but 
 before we deal with it in detail, it will be better to 
 describe " Bloody Sunday, 1887," and the part 
 Burns played thereon. Meantime we will take a 
 glimpse of Burns in his domestic environment, and 
 hear what he had to say about his hopes and 
 ambitions. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 MR. AND MRS. BURNS AT HOME, 1 886. 
 
 The Old Bailey trial gave bold advertisement to the 
 name of John Burns. The leading part he had 
 taken in the Trafalgar Square meeting, his speeches 
 in Hyde Park, his red flag wagging on every con- 
 ceivable occasion, culminating in his speech from 
 the dock, made Burns the hero of the occasion. 
 Henceforth the general public regarded him as of 
 more account than his co-defendants. 
 
 That Burns enjoyed his notoriety I had many 
 opportunities for seeing. We were very intimate in 
 those early days. He frequently called in at our 
 rooms in Wine Office Court, which were convenient 
 when he came to town, and the wife and I had a 
 standing invitation to return the visit any time we 
 liked, and to get a cup of tea with him and Mrs. 
 Burns at their house on Lavender Hill. 
 
 While the trial was impending, we had not found 
 it convenient to make our call. But soon after the 
 trial I had a slack afternoon, and the wife and I set 
 out to discover Battersea. 
 
 It was on a Saturday that we paid our visit to 
 Lavender Hill. The 'bus driver, on whose right 
 and left we sat — it was in this way that we discovered 
 a great deal of London — knew all about Burns, 
 where he lived and worked, and he set us down at 
 the door of his house, a four-storied, bay-windowed 
 dwelling standing in a row a few yards off the road. 
 
 " That's his place, M'm," he said to the wife. " He 
 
 86 
 

 
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 li^l 
 
 ^ 
 
 f 
 
 
 ^1 
 
 
 
 
 ^H 
 
 
 
 
 ^'^^^H 
 
 
 
 ^^^Kttti 
 
 /.~^^H 
 
 MRS, JOSEPH BURGESS 
 
MR. AND MRS. BURNS AT HOME 87 
 
 has the lower half of that house. Knock at the 
 basement door. But it's half a chance he's in the 
 Park, playing cricket." 
 
 We followed our directions, knocked at the base- 
 ment door, and it was opened to us by Mrs. Burns, 
 to who^ we had been introduced when she made 
 a flying visit to Nottingham during the 1885 
 election. 
 
 " You should have sent us word you were coming, " 
 she exclaimed. " Jack is in the Park, but I'll send 
 for him. If I send now I may catch him before he 
 joins a side for the afternoon's cricket." 
 
 " If you don't mind," I said, " I will go down to 
 the Park." 
 
 " If you would," said Mrs. Burns, " that will save 
 me going out to get a messenger." 
 
 So I walked to Battersea Park, and there I found 
 Burns enjoying a practice at the nets. 
 
 He was frankly disappointed at having to miss 
 his cricket. 
 
 " I wish you had come to-morrow," he said, " for 
 I did want a game to-day. Besides, you could have 
 heard me speak. But come along." 
 
 So he gave up his bat, and another took his 
 place. 
 
 " Sorry I can't stop with you this afternoon, boys," 
 Burns said to the players, " but you see how it is. 
 John Burns has become a person of importance 
 since he made the acquaintance of one of Her 
 Majesty's Judges." 
 
 Amid cries of "Good old Burns," we left the 
 cricket field and returned to Lavender Hill. On 
 the way, Burns nodded to this person, shook hands 
 with that, stopped for a chat with a third, and 
 responded to every sign of recognition vouchsafed. 
 
 "Why, Jack," I said, "you might be in the midst 
 of a Parliamentary candidature ! " 
 
 " So I am, my boy ; so I am," he replied. " In six 
 
88 JOHN BURNS 
 
 years from now I shall be the member for Battersea. 
 I have already given Morgan — the present Liberal 
 member — notice. He's a good soul, one of the best 
 of his sort, runs his works on the eight hours' system, 
 but John Burns wants Battersea, and John Burns 
 means to have it. Six years will do it, in fact five 
 would be sufficient. But the Parliament may last 
 six, seeing that the Tories are in. Meantime, they 
 are talking of establishing a County Council for 
 London. If they do, John Burns will be one of 
 the first members of that body to represent Batter- 
 sea." 
 
 "Well," I said, "I must say I admire your con- 
 fidence." 
 
 "Confidence begets confidence," he replied. 
 *' When a man knows what he wants, he is in a fair 
 way for getting it. Now I do know what I want. I 
 want to be the Tribune of Battersea, to represent it 
 on the governing body of London, to sit for it in the 
 House of Commons, and after that " 
 
 " Well, what after that ? " 
 
 "After that there is no limit to what may be 
 accomplished by an able and ambitious man, and I 
 am both. The position would give me such an 
 advantage that I would become the undisputed 
 leader of the Socialist and Labour forces of Great 
 Britain." 
 
 "What about Champion? What about Hynd- 
 man ? " 
 
 "They'll neither of them ever enter Parliament. 
 They cannot get in as Labour members, and as 
 Socialists they will be too heavily handicapped. 
 No, I shall have the Parliamentary field all to myself 
 — the Liberal-Labour men will not count. But here 
 we are." 
 
 By this time we had reached Burns's house. After 
 greeting my wife, he took me into his library. This 
 was in the front basement, which was lit by a bay 
 
MR. AND MRS. BURNS AT HOME 89 
 
 window, and even then contained a goodly store of 
 books. 
 
 " What do you think of that ? " he cried. " Is it 
 not a credit to a working man ? " 
 
 Indeed it was, and I had no hesitation in telling 
 him so. 
 
 " But it is only the merest skeleton of what it will 
 be made if I have luck. Do you know what is almost 
 the dearest wish of my heart ? " 
 
 " To have a good library," I suggested. 
 
 "No," he said, "not so much to have a good 
 library, with the accent on the have, as to make a 
 complete collection of all books, pamphlets, news- 
 papers, and so on, dealing with the Labour and 
 Socialist movement — I've got a complete file of your 
 Operative, as you can see — and when I die, to leave 
 a 'John Burns' Collection' to the Battersea Free 
 Library. I want the generations that come after me 
 to be able to trace, step by step, the path I had to 
 tread to win the position it is certain I shall some 
 day assume. Don't you think it is a good idea ? " 
 
 I knew Burns sufficiently well already, not to 
 hesitate to endorse his views. To doubt them would 
 have made him into a cool friend, to criticise them 
 might have converted him into an active enemy. 
 
 When I had sufficiently admired his library, we 
 adjourned to the living room, where Mrs. Burns and 
 my wife were chatting, what time the kettle sang 
 merrily on the hob. 
 
 After tea, we returned home. On reaching Wine 
 Office Court I questioned my wife as to the im- 
 pressions made upon her by Mrs. Burns. 
 
 "She's very pretty," she said, "but, of course, 
 you would see that. What is more important, she 
 is exceedingly ambitious. She dotes on Burns, and 
 believes he is capable of doing great things. More- 
 over, she is determined he shall do them. And she 
 will make him do them, mind that ! " 
 
go JOHN BURNS 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean that I don't think Mrs. Burns cares very 
 much for what you call the movement. To her, the 
 beginning and end of the movement is centred 
 and wrapped up in her husband. And if ever it 
 becomes a question of the movement going one way, 
 and Burns's interests pointing another, she will urge 
 Burns to follow his own star, and let the movement 
 ' g^ng 'ts ain gait.' It only needs one thing to give 
 her a power against* which Burns, were he ever so 
 minded, would struggle in vain." 
 
 " And what is that ? " 
 
 " Let her bear a son. You heard Burns say he 
 w.is a Malthusian. I don't think Mrs. Burns likes 
 that boast. She is deeply in love with her husband, 
 and he is equally in love with her. They have been 
 married four years. When Burns gets into Parlia- 
 ment, and it is inevitable he will, she will want him 
 to train on towards the Treasury Bench. But not 
 in a subordinate post. She thinks the Cabinet is 
 not too good for Burns. Well, what is going to 
 happen if that ambition shows itself ? Surely, Burns 
 will have to break with the Social Democratic 
 Federation. I gathered from Mrs. Burns that he is 
 already impatient of Hyndman's dominance there. 
 Quarrels are certain to come about, and Burns will 
 be driven off at a tangent. And whenever the im- 
 pulse comes, you may depend upon it that Mrs. 
 Burns will use her powers of persuasion in the same 
 direction. And if she bears Burns a son she will 
 get such a leverage that her will must prevail over 
 any feelings of loyalty to his old comrades Burns 
 may entertain." 
 
 I was very much struck, and made note of it 
 at the time, with my wife's forecast of the influence 
 Mrs. Burns would probably exert on his career, 
 for when I told her what Burns had said to me, 
 and we put two and two together, what she pre- 
 
MR. AND MRS. BURNS AT HOME 91 
 
 dieted did not seem at all an unlikely thing to 
 happen. 
 
 And as at this point my wife disappears from the 
 main current of my story, child-bearing and the 
 rearing of our family keeping her henceforth more 
 and more in the domestic circle, let me, before we 
 part with her, pay a due tribute to the companion of 
 my young manhood and middle age, who has, alas ! 
 these more than twenty years been absent from my 
 home and hearth, though never, thank God, from 
 my memory. 
 
 When the final apportionment of the forces which 
 created the Labour movement is made, the devoted 
 women who encouraged and comforted those whose 
 lot cast them into the forefront of the struggle, will 
 enjoy their meed of praise. 
 
 When the hour was darkest and most disap- 
 pointing, it was from them that courage was re- 
 newed. All honour to the martyred wives and 
 mothers, but for whom Labour's champions might 
 have been driven from the field. And all honour 
 and affectionate regard to thee, my dearest comrade, 
 who never knew the exultation of triumph, but bore 
 a smiling face through successive defeats and dis- 
 appointments. 
 
 This testimony to thy devotion and sacrifice I lay 
 upon thy tomb — thou who wert ever true and 
 tender to me. 
 
 After which digression I must again take up the 
 thread of my story. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 WHY CHAMPION LEFT THE S.D.F., 
 
 LORD mayor's day, 1 886 
 
 The Trades Congress official year runs from 
 September to September. In the twelve months 
 ending September 1886, there had been two 
 General Elections. 
 
 We have already dealt with that of November 
 1885, in so far as it concerned John Burns's can- 
 didature at West Nottingham. Other Labour 
 candidates had been more fortunate than Burns. 
 W. Abraham ("Mabon"), John Wilson (Durham), 
 George Howell, Joseph Leicester, and Joseph Arch 
 won seats at the 1885 Election. But, alas, at the 
 1886 Election, all these men, except "Mabon," lost 
 their constituencies. 
 
 When the Trades Union Congress met at Hull, 
 in the September of 1886, the report of the Parlia- 
 mentary Committee deplored the set-back to Labour 
 representation. 
 
 "Not so much," the report protested, "for the 
 loss of a few seats in Parliament, as for the moral 
 considerations to be drawn from it. 
 
 " Will those who represent the capitalists, the 
 employing and other vested interests," the report 
 proceeded, "divest themselves of selfish purposes 
 and serve your cause as well as workmen can or 
 ought to be able to do for themselves ? 
 
 " There will," the report concluded, " be small 
 chance for a just recognition of the claims of our 
 
WHY CHAMPION LEFT THE S.D.F. 93 
 
 poorer population and all that relates to the just 
 dues of Labour, until it is represented in the House 
 of Commons by men who know and have experi- 
 enced the privations and necessities by which the 
 life of the operatives is constantly surrounded," 
 
 This idea of Labour representation dominated 
 the Hull Congress, and before it closed the following 
 resolution had been passed : — 
 
 "That, while considering it the duty of the 
 State to provide for the official election expenses 
 of Parliamentary candidates, and also for the 
 reasonable payment of members of the House 
 of Commons, the Congress is of opinion that the 
 direct representation of Labour in the House of 
 Commons is necessary in the interests of the 
 working classes and of the kingdom at large, and 
 that the workmen of the country be desired to form 
 district funds to enable industrial candidates to 
 contest elections, and each delegate present be 
 requested to bring the matter before their various 
 bodies with that object in view, and the Congress 
 shall, at its Annual Meeting, elect a Labour 
 Electoral Committee, consisting of twenty-three 
 members, to be allotted to eight districts of the 
 United Kingdom." 
 
 As a proof that Congress was, at last, really in 
 earnest on this subject of Labour representation, 
 it proceeded immediately to the election of the 
 twenty-three members of the first Labour Electoral 
 Committee, and these gentlemen were empowered 
 to form Electoral Committees in their respective 
 districts, and to report to the 1887 Congress, which 
 was fixed to be held at Swansea. 
 
 I had gone down to the Hull Congress in pursuit 
 of my avocation as a Labour journalist, and there 
 I made the acquaintance of another Labour 
 journalist, Mr. Maltman Barry, who turned out to 
 be a great friend of Champion, one who did 
 
94 JOHN BURNS 
 
 undoubtedly exert a great influence on Champion's 
 career. 
 
 Barry soon made himself known to me. He 
 had, he said, studied my Nottingham. Operative, 
 and he was pleased to say that it did me credit. 
 Champion had brought the paper under his notice, 
 he continued, and then he went on to talk about 
 Champion, and of what a pity it was that so able 
 a gentleman should waste himself on the Social 
 Democratic Federation. 
 
 " If Champion would take my advice," said Barry, 
 "he would drop the Socialists and hitch on to the 
 Trade Union movement This new departure will 
 give him the chance to do so. Membership of the 
 Labour Electoral Associations cannot be confined 
 to Trade Unionists, and I shall advise Champion to 
 join the London district." 
 
 A few months later I learned that this had actually 
 come to pass, and the coincidence impressed me 
 with the strength of the influence Barry was able to 
 exert over Champion. 
 
 Meantime, it is necessary to state the circum- 
 stances under which the rupture between Champion 
 and the Social Democratic Federation occurred. 
 
 The Unemployed crisis of the winter of 1885 had 
 been somewhat modified during the summer of 
 1886, but, as winter came on, distress became 
 more acute, and the Social Democrats, ever ready 
 to voice the demands of the Unemployed, con- 
 ceived the idea of organising a big demonstration 
 of the out-of-works, to follow on at the tail-end 
 of the Lord Mayor's Procession on the 9th of 
 November. 
 
 Sir Charles Warren, however, was now Com- 
 missioner of Police, and he made it known that 
 any such demonstration would not be allowed. In 
 the circumstances, the Executive of the S.D.F. 
 recognised that it would be folly to lead unarmed 
 
WHY CHAMPION LEFT THE S.D.F. 95 
 
 men against the police, but they determined to 
 " bluff " up to the last moment. 
 
 Accordingly, they gave it out that the demon- 
 stration would certainly be held, and nightly 
 meetings of the Executive were summoned to give 
 the impression that preparations for the demon- 
 stration were afoot. 
 
 The S.D.F. version of the rupture with Champion 
 is that he was not in favour of this policy of 
 " bluff," and really wanted to lead the Unemployed 
 against the police. Anyhow, wiser counsels pre- 
 vailed, or the "Bloody Sunday" of November 13, 
 1887, might have been anticipated by twelve months. 
 For Sir Charles Warren and the authorities were in 
 no mood to tolerate any opportunities for disorder. 
 The route the Lord Mayor's Procession took was 
 guarded as strongly as the streets of St. Petersburg 
 during the progress of the Czar. All along Fleet 
 Street the tradesmen had the shutters up. And 
 how relieved the public were when the day passed 
 over without trouble may be gathered from the 
 following contemporary account : — 
 
 "The dreaded 9th of November is almost over, 
 and the inhabitants of London breathe freely again. 
 The terrible things that might have come upon us 
 in the streets of the Metropolis to-day have not 
 come upon us at all, and people are beginning to 
 wonder why there should have been such a scare. 
 
 " As it happens, the Lord Mayor has been allowed 
 to parade the streets with all his show without 
 molestation by the mob, and the Socialists have 
 been permitted to hold their much-dreaded meeting 
 in Trafalgar Square without molestation by the 
 police. There has, consequently, been no sacking 
 of the West End by the Unemployed out of the 
 East End, no reading of the Riot Act, no shedding 
 of blood, and not even any breaking of window 
 glass. The day's events have passed off with just 
 
96 JOHN BURNS 
 
 as much interruption and little more of the business 
 of London than the Lord Mayor's Show inevitably 
 produces." 
 
 The writer of the foregoing account fell into one 
 error. The Socialists were not permitted to demon- 
 strate in Trafalgar Square unmolested by the police. 
 The police cleared the Square when only George 
 Bateman and Tom Mann had spoken — Hyndman, 
 Burns, and Champion being thus effectually closured. 
 
 But the Social Democrats were in no mood to be 
 expelled from Trafalgar Square without a protest. 
 Accordingly, a monster demonstration was adver- 
 tised for Sunday, 13th November. Sir Charles 
 Warren did not go the length of prohibiting the 
 meeting, but he prepared against any possibility of 
 riot by ordering 4000 police on duty in and around 
 the Square, and holding 500 soldiers in reserve at 
 Knightsbridge Barracks. 
 
 At this meeting Burns was very severe on the 
 Labour leaders. He denounced by name the 
 Shiptons, the Potters, and the Burnetts, and said 
 that instead of those leaders of the working classes 
 being at that meeting to voice the demands of the 
 workers, they were dining that day off the game 
 presented to them the previous week by that prince 
 of outdoor paupers, Albert Edward. Those fraudu- 
 lent panderers to Royalty, he continued, begged 
 charity from a Prince instead of helping to remove 
 the causes that rendered it possible for princes to 
 exist and honest men to starve. 
 
 What Burns meant is indicated by a passage in a 
 speech he delivered on Sunday, 23rd January, 1887. 
 On that day, in accordance with the Social Demo- 
 cratic policy of holding church parades of the 
 Unemployed, Burns led 400 out-of-works to Old 
 Battersea Church. After the service, he addressed 
 a meeting of the men opposite the Prince's Head, 
 and in the course of his speech remarked that they 
 
WHY CHAMPION LEFT THE S.D.F. 97 
 
 had been asked that day to bless the Queen and 
 Royal Family, but he considered they were already 
 too well blessed at the expense of other people. 
 
 Burns's Republican opinions at this time even led 
 him to condone regicide. The South- Western Star 
 for April 16, 1887, reports a speech by Burns, in 
 which he said : — 
 
 " Lately Europe had been startled by an attempt 
 on the life of the Czar of Russia. Great sorrow 
 had been expressed by the papers at the attempt on 
 the part of the men, who in Russia were only 
 desperate, and only resorted to force and to secret 
 societies, because constitutional methods were dis- 
 allowed them. Great sorrow was shown by the 
 Times at the attempts to rid the earth of a tyrant. 
 He was sorry they did not succeed." 
 
 It was in this same speech that Burns made his 
 notorious " chemical parcel post " allusion. 
 
 " He would," he said, " ask those men who de- 
 precate force and extreme measures, if they did not 
 like the idea of Joseph Chamberlain following the 
 Czar and Lord Salisbury to heaven by means of a 
 chemical parcel post, to join hands with those men 
 who were trying to remove the causes which made 
 political assassination necessary." 
 
 That Burns was not only prepared to advocate 
 but also to use physical force, his action on " Bloody 
 Sunday " in the following November amply demon- 
 strated. 
 
 G 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 " BLOODY SUNDAY " — BURNS AND CUNNINGHAME 
 GRAHAM, M.P., SENT TO PRISON 
 
 During the summer of 1887 Burns, who played no 
 part in the evolution of the Labour Electoral, was 
 following his trade as an engineer, but not in any of 
 the large works. His reputation as an agitator 
 handicapped him there, and frequent victimisation 
 followed, until he entered the employment of Mr. 
 Lorraine, an electrical engineer, who was a member 
 of the Democratic Club. 
 
 Lorraine had his workshop in Westminster, and 
 I remember going there on one occasion to see 
 Burns. He was the only mechanic employed, and 
 his work was to act as fitter to Mr. Lorraine. 
 
 The place was one large room, very lofty, the 
 floor and the benches littered with all manner of 
 tools and machines used by Mr. Lorraine in his 
 business. Electrical engineering was then in its 
 infancy, and Burns was not tied hard and fast to 
 his bench, as he would have been in a busier estab- 
 lishment. 
 
 The shop hours were eight a day, and Burns 
 could always get off for any special occasion, and, 
 as November drew near, those special occasions 
 multiplied. 
 
 For the unemployed crisis was still acute. And 
 the S.D.F., with whom Burns was still associated, 
 continued its agitation on behalf of the unemployed. 
 So frequent, indeed, did the meetings become, that 
 
 98 
 
"BLOODY SUNDAY" 99 
 
 in October the police began to interfere with those 
 held in Trafalgar Square. 
 
 On 1 8th October, Colonel Roberts, acting under 
 the instructions of Sir Charles Warren, dispersed a 
 Social Democratic audience, arresting twenty men. 
 Not content with this, the police followed the 
 Social Democrats to Hyde Park the same day, and 
 dispersed the crowd that gathered round them. 
 On 20th October another meeting was held in 
 Hyde Park, from which a deputation was sent to 
 Mr. Mathew, the Home Secretary, complaining 
 of the action of the police. On 23rd October, a 
 Sunday, the Social Democrats held meetings of 
 the unemployed, morning, afternoon, and evening — 
 in the morning on Clerkenwell Green, in the after- 
 noon in Trafalgar Square, and in the evening at 
 Westminster Abbey, where they attended Divine 
 service. 
 
 In this agitation Burns played his customary 
 prominent part. 
 
 But it was not in consequence of any act he 
 committed at an unemployed meeting that Burns 
 was arrested on 13th November 1887, a day known 
 amongst the London Radicals as " Bloody Sunday." 
 
 The Trafalgar Square demonstration arranged 
 for that day was organised by the Metropolitan 
 Radical Federation, and its object was to protest 
 against the arrest of William O'Brien, M.P., an Irish 
 Nationalist, who had been arrested, and caused a 
 sensation by refusing to wear prison dress. To 
 compel him to conform, the turnkeys stole his 
 breeches, and O'Brien sat for many days in the cold 
 cell wrapped up in blankets. 
 
 "O'Brien's Breeches" immediately became a 
 rallying cry for all Socialists, who were Home 
 Rulers to a man, all Radicals, and all Gladstonian 
 Liberals. And when it was announced that the 
 Home Secretary, Mr. Mathew, had forbidden the 
 
loo JOHN BURNS 
 
 use of the Square for a protest demonstration by the 
 Metropolitan Radical Federation, the delight of the 
 Social Democrats was unbounded. That prohibi- 
 tion committed the Radicals to an agitation for 
 " free speech," side by side with the Socialists. 
 Accordingly, the Social Democrats made their 
 preparations for a joint demonstration with the 
 Radicals on 13th November. 
 
 On Saturday, 1 2th November, the Metropolitan 
 Radical Federation made a final attempt to induce 
 Mr. Mathew to withdraw his prohibition. A depu- 
 tation, headed by Cunninghame Graham, M.P., 
 waited upon the Home Secretary. Mr. Mathew, 
 however, proved adamantine. He consented to see 
 Mr. Graham, but would not admit the deputation, 
 and informed Mr. Graham that the meeting could 
 not be permitted, and that Sir Charles Warren had 
 orders to prevent it being held. 
 
 Sir Charles Warren's plan of campaign was 
 simplicity itself. The bulk of the demonstrators 
 would have to come from the Surrey side of the 
 Thames, and by occupying the bridges he could 
 prevent any organised procession coming near 
 Trafalgar Square from that quarter. 
 
 These tactics succeeded in their object. There 
 was a serious scuffle on Westminster Bridge, where 
 the Bermondsey, Fulham, and Deptford contingents 
 tried to force a passage, but the police were too 
 strong for them. The procession was broken up, 
 and in the mel6e twenty-six persons were so badly 
 injured that they had to be admitted to St. 
 Thomas's Hospital for surgical treatment. 
 
 But if the demonstrators could not reach the 
 Square in processional order, they did so in units 
 and small parties. In this way immense crowds 
 assembled in the streets debouching on the Square, 
 where Sir Charles Warren posted a cordon of police 
 four deep all round, a large body of reserves inside 
 
"BLOODY SUNDAY" loi 
 
 the Square, and had also the Life Guards within 
 call. 
 
 In spite of this overwhelming force, Graham and 
 Burns, who had met by arrangement at the Charing 
 Cross Underground Station, decided to make an 
 effort to storm the barrier. In an interview Graham 
 gave me, he described what happened : — 
 
 "We proceeded," he said, "to the Square from 
 the Hotel Metropole. I was seized by the police. 
 Two constables seized me, one by each shoulder. 
 Another pulled me by the ear from behind, and 
 a fourth struck me on the head with his truncheon. 
 Other blows were struck on various parts of my 
 body, and the policeman who cut my head was 
 making a second blow when Burns raised his folded 
 arms above his head and rushed between us to 
 ward off the blow. An inspector of police was 
 standing near, but the police did not seem to be 
 acting under any specific instructions." 
 
 Graham's account of the treatment he suffered 
 was corroborated at the Old Bailey trial by an 
 independent witness. Sir Edward Reed, who de- 
 scribed what he saw from a window of Morley's 
 Hotel as follows : — 
 
 "Before Graham reached the centre of the 
 Square his head was bleeding. After he was in the 
 custody of the police, and when he was quite 
 powerless, policemen, one after another, stepped 
 forward and dealt him blows over the head quite 
 unjustifiably." 
 
 Graham was not the only man maltreated by the 
 police. In dispersing the crowds they used their 
 truncheons so freely that between sixty and 
 seventy patients had to be treated at Charing 
 Cross Hospital. 
 
 For more than a fortnight after "Bloody 
 Sunday," Trafalgar Square was in a state of siege. 
 On Friday, the i8th, thousands of special constables 
 
102 JOHN BURNS 
 
 were sworn in. On Sunday, the 20th, the Square 
 was garrisoned by 5000 constables, 2000 specials, 
 with 1300 specials in reserve, of whom 500 were 
 posted at Palace Yard, and the remainder at 
 Marlborough House. 
 
 On Monday, the 28th, the police became so 
 violent that injuries were inflicted on a man named 
 Alfred Linnell, from which he died on 3rd De- 
 cember, and the occasion of his funeral, Sunday, 
 i8th December, was seized upon for a demonstra- 
 tion of sympathy the like of which had never been 
 seen in London. 
 
 The procession to Bow Cemetery passed through 
 Waterloo Street, the Strand, Fleet Street, and St. 
 Paul's. It was one and a half miles in length. 
 Hundreds of thousands of spectators lined the 
 streets. 
 
 Amongst the pall-bearers were William Morris, 
 Cunninghame Graham, W. T. Stead, Commissioner 
 Frank Smith, representing the Salvation Army, 
 Herbert Burrows, and Mrs. Besant. 
 
 The hearse was surmounted by a black shield, 
 bearing the words " Killed in Trafalgar Square." 
 On the coffin was a brass plate, inscribed as 
 follows: — "Alfred Linnell, 41, died 3rd December 
 1887, from injuries inflicted by police in Trafalgar 
 Square, 28th November. Buried at the public 
 expense, i8th December 1887." 
 
 The Rev. Stewart Headlam officiated at the grave, 
 William Morris delivered an oration, and the singing 
 of a " Death Song," composed by Morris, closed 
 the obsequies. 
 
 It will be seen that public sentiment was pro- 
 foundly stirred, and the interest was kept alive by 
 the impending trial of Graham and Burns at the 
 Old Bailey, to which they had been committed from 
 Bow Street, where Graham was defended by Mr. 
 Asquith, the same Mr. Asquith who became Home 
 
"BLOODY SUNDAY" 103 
 
 Secretary in 1892, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 
 1905, and Prime Minister in 1908. Graham's bail 
 at Bow Street was Mr. Haldane, best remembered 
 as the War Minister who, in 1907, reorganised the 
 Army, substituting the Territorials for the Volun- 
 teers and Militia. The Rev. Stewart Headlam 
 stood bail for Burns, and he was assisted in his 
 defence by Mr. W. M. Thompson, barrister, who 
 had coached him on points of law at his previous 
 trial. 
 
 At the Old Bailey trial, which began on i6th 
 January 1888, and lasted three days, the Judge was 
 Mr. Justice Charles, and Mr. Asquith again defended 
 Graham, Burns defending himself, with the assist- 
 ance of Mr. Thompson. The prosecuting counsel 
 were the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, 
 and Mr. Poland. 
 
 The indictment charged the prisoners with 
 riotously assembling, to the terror and disturbance 
 of Her Majesty's subjects. Other counts in the 
 indictment charged them with being armed and 
 assaulting the police. 
 
 The jury returned a verdict of "Not Guilty," on 
 the charge of riot, disorder, and assault, and of 
 "Guilty" on the charge of unlawful assault, and 
 the Judge sentenced both prisoners to imprison- 
 ment for six weeks, without hard labour. 
 
 This trial and imprisonment had two important 
 consequences. First, it brought Burns into sym- 
 pathetic association with the Radicals of London 
 generally, and of Battersea in particular. Second, 
 it thus paved the way for his election to the 
 London County Council in March 1889. How 
 this occurred it is now my duty to tell. H. H. 
 Champion played an important part in the deve- 
 lopment of the drama. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 champion's masterful policy in 1888 — THE 
 GENESIS OF THE DOCK STRIKE 
 
 Champion lost no time in demonstrating that he 
 meant to play a considerable part in Labour 
 politics. A by-election in Dulwich in December 
 1887, three months after the formation of the 
 Labour Electoral Association, gave him his first 
 opportunity. 
 
 The candidates were Mr. Blundell Maple, Con- 
 servative, and Mr. James Henderson, Liberal. Mr. 
 Champion supported Mr. Henderson, both by 
 speech and letter, on the express ground that he 
 was a better employer of Labour than Mr. Maple. 
 
 In May 1888 there was another by-election at 
 Southampton. The candidates were Mr. Guest, 
 Conservative, and Mr. F. Evans, Liberal. By this 
 time Mr. Champion was making arrangements for 
 the establishment of The Labour Elector. In his 
 employ was Mr. George Bateman, a member 
 of the London Society of Compositors, and after- 
 wards, at the General Election of 1892, Radical 
 candidate for Holborn. As he was unable to visit 
 Southampton himself, Mr. Champion sent down 
 Bateman to interview the candidates in the name of 
 the Labour Electoral Association, and as the result 
 of the pledges he obtained, Bateman, in the name 
 of the L.E.A., advised the electors to vote for Mr. 
 Evans, who won the seat for the Liberals, a Con- 
 servative having previously sat, 
 
 104 
 
CHAMPION'S MASTERFUL POLICY 105 
 
 In June 1888 Champion started The Labour Elector, 
 and, in the same month, three by-elections oc- 
 curred. One was in Thanet, Kent. Mr. Bateman 
 again represented Mr. Champion, and again the 
 electors were advised to vote for the Liberal can- 
 didate, Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen. The second 
 election took place in the Ayr Burghs. Here Mr. 
 Champion was represented by Tom Mann and 
 Keir Hardie. The electors were advised to vote 
 for the Liberal candidate, Mr. Sinclair, who won 
 the seat from the Conservatives. 
 
 So far, Champion's intervention in politics had 
 always been on the Liberal side, and the Liberals 
 had gained two seats. But he now decided to 
 run a Labour candidate for Mid-Lanark, and 
 Keir Hardie was selected to carry the colours, 
 Mr. Champion undertaking to find the finances, 
 which were provided by Miss Harkness, then 
 better known under her literary nom de plume 
 of " John Law." Mr. Champion acted as Election 
 Agent. 
 
 Thus we have reached a situation exactly similar 
 to that at West Nottingham in 1885, the only 
 difference being that Mr. Champion's prot^g^ is 
 now Keir Hardie, whereas, at West Nottingham, it 
 was John Burns. 
 
 In March 1889 there was a by-election in Ken- 
 nington. Champion declared for the Liberal candi- 
 date, Mr. Beaufoy, who won the seat from the 
 Conservatives. Burns, as Champion's lieutenant, 
 spoke for Beaufoy, and undoubtedly this helped 
 him to win the Battersea County Council seat in 
 the same month. 
 
 It was for assisting Beaufoy in this election that 
 Burns was so warmly criticised by the S.D.F. 
 leaders that he resigned his connection with that 
 body, and founded the Battersea Labour League. 
 Burns recognised that, hampered by S.D.F. dis- 
 
io6 JOHN BURNS 
 
 cipline, he could not possibly win the Parlia- 
 mentary seat in Battersea, which he had set his 
 heart on doing. 
 
 So he parted company with the Social Democrats, 
 and shortly after, in August 1889, the Dock Strike 
 occurred, when Burns's lucky star rose to its zenith. 
 
 Just as the association with the Metropolitan 
 Radical Federation on " Bloody Sunday " made 
 Burns's calling and election to the County Council 
 certain, so the Dock Strike virtually lifted him into 
 Parliament. But with the genesis of the Dock 
 Strike Burns had little to do. Others prepared the 
 way for that historic eruption who have had very 
 little of the kudos. These I must now bring into 
 the limelight, and to do so will necessitate a visit to 
 the East End. 
 
 What I saw at the West India Dock gates, Poplar, 
 will ever be branded on my memory. There was a 
 surging crowd of men, looking more than half- 
 starved, waiting at the gates. To them would come 
 a ganger, or contractor, when he wanted men, and 
 the struggling and fighting of the wretched com- 
 petitors for work was the saddest sight I ever saw. 
 
 The strong trampled the weak ; there was no 
 mercy. The weak were driven back, or held back, 
 or shoved aside. Then when the demand of the 
 moment had been satisfied, and the fortunate few 
 had gone inside, the sullen crowd waited until 
 another call caused another struggle. 
 
 I said those were fortunate who were taken on. 
 But that is only a comparative term. The wages 
 for casual labour were fivepence an hour, and a man 
 might be turned off with only one hour's work and 
 one hour's pay, and that after standing at the gate 
 for a day in order to get a turn at all. 
 
 The dockers had absolutely no organisation, but 
 on inquiry I learned that a Union of tea-warehouse- 
 men had been formed at the Cutler Street Ware- 
 
CHAMPION'S MASTERFUL POLICY 107 
 
 house by Ben Tillett, of whom I then heard for the 
 first time. There was also a Stevedores' Union, of 
 which Tom M'Carthy was secretary. 
 
 Later in the year, November 1888, I heard of 
 Tillett leading a strike at Tilbury Docks. Tilbury 
 was too far from the centre of dockland to set an 
 example to the rest, or the historic strike of August 
 1889, might have been anticipated. 
 
 However, as soon as I heard of the trouble at the 
 West India Dock on the 14th August 1889, I rushed 
 down to write it up. I had no idea that the strike 
 would be any more than a temporary rupture when 
 I went, but soon saw reason to alter my views. 
 
 Ben Tillett was the first man on the field. Tom 
 M'Carthy joined him on the Saturday, the 17th, 
 when the stevedores, led by Tom, struck work. 
 The first procession into the city of London took 
 place on Monday, 19th August. It numbered 20,000 
 demonstrators. By this time Tom Mann and Burns 
 had joined the Strike Committee, and with them 
 came H. H. Champion, who is credited with doing a 
 lot of the organising behind the scenes. By Thurs- 
 day the 22nd the Strike had become general, and on 
 that day Tillett and Burns interviewed the Dock 
 Directors. The day following there were 37,000 
 men in the procession to the city. On Sunday, the 
 27th, a demonstration in support of the dockers was 
 held in Hyde Park. The procession numbered 
 80,000 men, and 200,000 gathered round the plat- 
 forms in the Park. 
 
 It was at this Hyde Park meeting that the note 
 of the New Unionism, which was so profoundly to 
 modify the old conception of trade unionism, was 
 struck. Tom M'Carthy, who presided at No. i plat- 
 form, said they were demonstrating without the 
 men who for many years had climbed to place and 
 power on the shoulders of the working classes. It 
 was time they trusted those men no longer, but 
 
io8 JOHN BURNS 
 
 took their affairs in their own hands. Ben Tillett 
 proposed a resolution calling upon " all true trade 
 unionists" to assist labour to get its own rights. 
 Burns seconded this, and said that after seeing the 
 men outside the dock gates weak and fainting with 
 hunger, he had sworn not to rest until their demands 
 were conceded. 
 
 How this pledge was redeemed, and the effect 
 it had on the fortunes of John Burns will now 
 be told. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 BURNS AND THE DOCKERS 
 
 One quality possessed by Burns, which must always 
 be taken into account in forming an estimate of 
 his character, was his Barnura-like ability as a 
 showman. He had an unfailing aptitude for dis- 
 covering the centre of the picture, and posing 
 there. Hence the celerity with which he forced 
 his way to the front rank of the leaders of the 
 Dockers' Strike, a strike which he had done nothing 
 to bring about, but from which he profited so 
 much. 
 
 In the two years following upon the Dock 
 Strike, Burns's determination to be in the front 
 of any big movement for improving the lot of the 
 workers became somewhat chastened. His ex- 
 perience during the Scottish Railwaymen's Strike, 
 to take part in which he rushed off, uninvited, to 
 Scotland, and which turned out to be a failure, 
 begot a prudence which tempered Burns's eager- 
 ness. He became concerned as to the effect upon 
 his own reputation if he were associated with a 
 fiasco, and hung back until the signs and auguries 
 of a success made it safe to hazard his fortunes. 
 
 I noted this prudence particularly during the 
 Busmen's Strike in 1891. 
 
 The Busmen's strike was organised by Frank 
 Smith, formerly a Commissioner in the Salvation 
 Army, and the real inspirer of the social work 
 which General Booth subsequently exploited so 
 
 log 
 
no JOHN BURNS 
 
 profitably. Smith had left the Salvation Army, 
 and thrown himself into trade union work. In 
 association with Thomas Suthers, a barrister, he 
 formed the Busmen's Union, Suthers being presi- 
 dent, and Smith, secretary. Then they began 
 holding midnight meetings of busmen, assisted by 
 members of the London Trades Council, the execu- 
 tive of which body supported the agitation for 
 shorter hours and better pay. Ultimately the agita- 
 tion was ripe for a general strike of busmen all 
 over London, and a certain night was announced 
 as the one on which, after making their last jour- 
 neys, the busmen were to repair to the Victoria 
 Music Hall, over Waterloo Bridge, to initiate the 
 strike. 
 
 On the night in question I was there in good 
 time to report proceedings. Midnight was an- 
 nounced as the hour at which the meeting was 
 to begin, and as midnight drew near the hall 
 began to fill up with the busmen first off duty. 
 On the platform were the Executive of the London 
 Trades Council, and many of the less well-known 
 leaders of trade unionism in London. Suthers 
 took the chair, and opened the meeting. 
 
 I looked round for Burns, but he was not on 
 view. But in a stage box, hiding behind the 
 curtain, there he was, sitting in judgment as to 
 whether the strike was likely to prove successful. 
 For a time the matter was in doubt. There were 
 many vacant places in the hall. At length, how- 
 ever, the men from the outlying districts, by bus 
 loads, began to come in, and the hall filled up. 
 Only then did Burns discover himself, pass from 
 the stage box to the back of the platform, rapidly 
 work his way to the front row, and in less than 
 a quarter of an hour after that he was attempting 
 to take the conduct of the meeting out of the 
 hands of Mr. Suthers. 
 
BURNS AND THE DOCKERS iii 
 
 But Thomas Suthers proved his match for the 
 moment. " Sit down, Mr. Burns," he said sternly, 
 " I am the chairman of this meeting." And Burns 
 had to subside. 
 
 But the rebuff was only temporary. The next 
 day Burns, accompanied by Fred Hammill, who 
 had succeeded him in the employment of Mr. 
 Lorraine, was all over the West End rallying the 
 busmen. For more than a week he was seldom 
 off the streets. At the end of that time the busmen 
 had won their strike, and the greatest share of 
 the credit fell to John Burns, who had not even 
 come in at the eleventh hour — it was the twelfth — 
 while the men who had done the spade work, and 
 without whom no strike would have been possible, 
 were practically ignored. 
 
 This calculating trait in Burns's character had 
 not developed at the time of the Dock Strike, but 
 the other feature, the determination to be first 
 in everything, and the rest nowhere, was already 
 dominant. And there can be no doubt that events 
 were so ordered that it was always the figure of 
 John Burns that stood out heroically during that 
 struggle. 
 
 Tillett, who was the pioneer, Tom M'Carthy, 
 his chief lieutenant — the men on the spot — were 
 overshadowed entirely by the importations. Tom 
 Mann and Champion had also to play second 
 fiddle to Burns, who took care to be in the 
 front of every procession, could shout the loudest 
 at all the meetings, and whose lungs of leather 
 and throat of brass never gave way under the 
 incessant strain. 
 
 Burns had full liberty to devote all his time to 
 the strike. He had got the Battersea Labour 
 League founded, and that organisation was finan- 
 cing him as its representative on the County 
 Council. That made his bread and butter secure, 
 
112 JOHN BURNS 
 
 and he could give all the assistance needed to the 
 dockers without fee or reward, other than the 
 popularity that daily increased in volume. 
 
 The daily processions, always headed by Burns, 
 grew so enormous that on one occasion it was 
 estimated that no fewer than 120,000 were in line. 
 Burns thus became the best known man in London. 
 And how he was generally regarded is well brought 
 out in an interview that appeared in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette, from which I will make an extract : — 
 
 "It was pleasant to see the good terms this 
 doughty champion of Labour is on with all classes. 
 Even the employers bear him no ill-will, and as 
 for the workers, everybody who recognised him 
 had a cheer or a smile for him. The City Police, 
 too, touched their hats to him, and nodded 
 pleasantly to the ex-convict of Trafalgar Square. 
 
 " It is something extraordinary," Burns said, 
 "the enthusiasm of the people. Here, in this very 
 street this morning, an old woman on crutches 
 raised herself to the window and gave me a wave 
 of the hand as I passed. Nothing on earth has 
 touched me more than that. And such meetings as 
 we have had ! Why, I never saw anything like 
 them. I do wish you had been with us on Tower 
 Hill. It was grand, sir ; it was grand. 
 
 "There we were with enormous rows of ware- 
 houses built and stored by the produce of their 
 work, as I told them, and then I caught sight of the 
 Tower, and something put it into my head to remind 
 them how Sir Thomas More, the originator of the 
 Eight Hours Movement, was once imprisoned 
 there. He must often have looked out of those 
 windows at the busy homes of men, and the cease- 
 less flow of old Father Thames. Perhaps he was 
 even looking now, I said, and bidding us be of good 
 cheer and remain true to the ideals of Utopia. The 
 allusion caught on splendidly. And as for the 
 
BURNS AND THE DOCKERS 113 
 
 morale of the men, it is splendid. We are bound 
 to win ; we are winning." 
 
 And win the men did, as all the world knows. 
 On Saturday, September 14th, the strike, which had 
 begun on August 14th, was settled on the following 
 terms : — 
 
 " I. The 5d. per hour to be raised in the case of 
 all labour not piecework on and after November 4th 
 next to 6d. per hour, and 8d. per hour overtime. 
 No pay for meal times. 
 
 " 2. Men called in not to be discharged with less 
 than 2S. pay, except in the case of special short 
 engagements in the afternoon. 
 
 "3. Present contract work to be converted not 
 later than November 4th into piecework, under 
 which the men will be paid not less than 6d. per 
 hour, with 8d. per hour overtime, and the surplus, 
 if any, to be divided between them, all payments 
 being made under the supervision of dock officials. 
 
 "4. The hours of overtime at the docks and 
 up-town warehouses shall be from 6 P.M. to 8 A.M. 
 
 " 5. The existing strike to be terminated, and all 
 the men connected with dock and river work to 
 return to work forthwith. 
 
 " 6. The strikers and their leaders undertake that 
 all labourers who have been at work during the 
 strike shall be unmolested, and treated as fellow 
 labourers by those who have been on strike. In 
 any employment for which men offer, when the 
 strike is ended, the directors will make no difference 
 between those who have and those who have not 
 taken part in it, and will not, directly or indirectly, 
 show resentment to any of the men who have 
 participated in it." 
 
 What really broke the back of the resistance of 
 the dock directors was the unbounded public sym- 
 pathy with the dockers, especially in Australia. On 
 Monday, September 9th, the Lord Mayor handed 
 
 H 
 
114 JOHN BURNS 
 
 over to the Strike Committee — all received by the 
 morning post — ;^i2oo from Adelaide, ;^Soo from 
 the Broken Hill miners, ;f looo from Brisbane, and 
 ;^40oo from Melbourne, and by the same post came 
 an advice that ^^1200 was to be sent from Sydney. 
 These munificent contributions from Australia had 
 a malign influence, later on, on the career of 
 Champion. When the Australian Shearers' Strike 
 was raging in 1891, the shearers expected that 
 London would reciprocate. Champion, however, 
 who happened to be in Australia, cabled Burns not 
 to send contributions, as the strike was sure to fail. 
 For this Champion was denounced on his return to 
 England, and he never regained popularity with the 
 London workmen. 
 
 Meantime the effect of the Dock Strike on 
 the career of Burns is our concern. Writing ten 
 days before the strike ended, the London corre- 
 spondent of the Bimiingham Post summed up the 
 situation as follows : — 
 
 " Whatever may be the issue of this strike, one 
 thing is quite clear. It will make John Burns 
 inevitable as a candidate for some London con- 
 stituency. 
 
 " He considers that Battersea ought to take him, 
 but the negotiations there came to nothing. He 
 declined to stand as a candidate of the Liberal Asso- 
 ciation, either as a Radical or as a Labour candidate, 
 declaring he would stand alone. 
 
 ''The Liberal Association, a thoroughly repre- 
 sentative body, declined to be stifled in this way, 
 and selected Mr. Lawson Walton, but Mr. Burns's 
 friends say that he will go to the poll, and that a 
 well-known soap manufacturer will guarantee the 
 expense." 
 
 To this point had Burns attained in the first 
 week of September 1889. In the same week the 
 Trades Union Congress was sitting in Dundee, 
 
BURNS AND THE DOCKERS 115 
 
 Keir Hardie was making his third attack on the 
 Liberal- Labour position, as embodied in the person 
 of Mr. Broadhurst, M.P., the secretary of the Con- 
 gress, and, incidentally, along with Cunninghame 
 Graham, attempting to persuade Burns to stand for 
 Dundee at a by-election caused by the death of 
 Mr. J. F. B. Frith, M.P., a colleague of Burns on the 
 London County Council 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 BURNS AND THE DUNDEE BY-ELECTION, 1 889 
 
 I AM indebted for an account of the negotiations 
 with Burns anent the Dundee vacancy in 1889 
 to David Lowe, author of A Scots Wanderjahre, 
 who subsequently was sub-editor of Keir Hardie's 
 Labour Leader. I was too busy following the 
 incidents of the Dock Strike to attend the Dundee 
 Trades Congress, which took place in the week 
 beginning September 3rd, the closing week of the 
 Dock Strike. 
 
 In 1910 Lowe wrote some reminiscences of 
 those early days for Forward, the organ of Scot- 
 tish Socialism, in which paper, by-the-bye, this 
 romance originally appeared in serial form. From 
 Lowe's reminiscences I extract the following : — 
 
 " During the Congress week, on 3rd September, 
 Mr. J. F. B. Frith, M.P., died in Switzerland, 
 and the local vacancy thus caused brought about 
 a by-election. 
 
 "A demonstration was held on the 5th September, 
 in front of the High School gate, on behalf of the 
 London Dockers, at which speeches were made 
 by Cunninghame Graham, M.P., Keir Hardie, Dr. 
 Aveling, and Mrs. Graham. From the demonstra- 
 tion sprang a meeting of Socialists and Labourists 
 favoured to direct representation of Labour in 
 Parliament. 
 
 "This small meeting of enthusiasts was held in 
 Tally Street Hall, and the intention was to run 
 
BURNS AND DUNDEE BY-ELECTION 117 
 
 John Burns for the vacancy. I knew, personally, 
 no one present. 
 
 "The chair was occupied by Graham, but only 
 for a few minutes, because ere the business was 
 scarcely under way he got into hot water. One 
 of the audience inquired whether Burns was to 
 be run as a Liberal, and the question not being 
 answered to the satisfaction of certain parties, the 
 meeting got shghtly out of hand. 
 
 " Graham lost his temper, and in a towering rage 
 told the faithful that they were only fit to be repre- 
 sented by capitalists, and thereupon he bounced 
 out of the hall. Hardie whispered to a young 
 man next him to follow Graham, and then quietly 
 took the chair. The young man, as I discovered 
 in later years, was John Carnegie. 
 
 " The meeting was soon brought round by Hardie, 
 and we were all willing (without qualification) to 
 take a hand in the contest. Meanwhile Graham 
 went striding on like a man possessed, out past the 
 Nine Wells, with John Carnegie at his heels. At 
 last he cooled down, and deigned to offer John a 
 few epigrams on the stupidity of the working 
 man. 
 
 "The return journey was more leisurely, and 
 when they reached the foot of Tally Street, Graham 
 stopped for a little, and looked up at the hall. 
 John said nothing, and Graham walked away again. 
 This little comedy occurred several times, until 
 he proposed that they should go and see how the 
 meeting was getting on, and they entered the hall 
 to find the meeting unanimous for Burns. 
 
 "A telegram was despatched that same night 
 asking Burns to contest the constituency, and a 
 reply was received next morning acceding to the 
 request. Pubhc feeling was aroused, and a mass 
 meeting of Socialists, Labourists, and sympathisers 
 was held on the Shore Terrace, on Saturday, 
 
Ii8 JOHN BURNS 
 
 7th September, at which a resolution was carried 
 unanimously endorsing the candidature of John 
 Burns. The speakers were Graham and Hardie. 
 
 " In the evening a meeting was held in the 
 Y.M.C.A. Rooms, when over 250 names were handed 
 in to form a committee, and John Addison and 
 Joseph Carr were appointed joint secretaries. 
 Immediately afterwards a letter was received from 
 Burns, which caused the Committee great uneasi- 
 ness. He began to water his assent, and stipulated 
 that the approval of all the Trade Unions and Labour 
 bodies should be guaranteed before he entered 
 upon the contest. 
 
 " Meanwhile, the Liberals had been interviewing 
 some of their prominent men, who, without excep- 
 tion, refused to stand against Burns. Then there 
 arrived on the scene one who in his day carried 
 through many difficult transactions for the Liberal 
 Party, and in the end received poor reward. I 
 refer to Mr. Marjoribanks, afterwards Lord Tweed- 
 mouth. He came and went in one day. 
 
 " It was supposed that he returned to London, 
 where he made an offer of the Battersea seat at 
 the first election to Burns, on condition that he 
 withdrew from Dundee. At any rate, a letter was 
 received on the following day withdrawing his 
 name, and giving as his reason that he was to 
 contest Battersea, of which he had a preference. 
 Our men at once requisitioned Tom Mann to stand, 
 but he declined, and eventually our committee and 
 enthusiasm collapsed like a cask without hoops." 
 
 This independent description of the Dundee 
 episode, besides throwing a light on the characters 
 of Graham and Hardie, is valuable as affording 
 early evidence of that diplomatic prudence which 
 soon began to distinguish Burns's conduct. It is 
 not conclusive as to whether Burns really did 
 receive a guarantee from the Liberal Whip about 
 
BURNS AND DUNDEE BY-ELECTION 119 
 
 Battersea, but that something of the sort was in the 
 wind was proved not much later when the sitting 
 Liberal member, Mr. Morgan, announced that 
 he did not intend to seek re-election for Battersea, 
 but would contest Ashton-under-Lyne, a Tory seat. 
 
 But Burns had not yet burnt his boats as a 
 Socialist, as his speeches at and after the Liverpool 
 Trades Congress of 1890 amply demonstrate. 
 
 Prior to attending the Liverpool Trades Union 
 Congress of 1890, which was his first appearance 
 in the Parliament of Labour, as it was then the 
 fashion to call the Congress, Burns made a speech 
 in Battersea, a passage from which will indicate 
 the spirit in which he went. 
 
 " He believed," he said, "that at the forthcoming 
 Congress many of the useless fossils and reaction- 
 aries who had held the office of general secretary 
 to their respective unions, who had used their 
 positions to chloroform the members, and incident- 
 ally of drawing an annuity of ;^20O or ;^300 for 
 their services while they had neglected the wages and 
 hours of the rank and file of their unions — those 
 men, he believed, would have to take a back seat." 
 
 Burns's anticipations proved correct. The legal 
 Eight Hours' resolution was carried. Mr. Thomas 
 Birtwistle, the nominee of the Lancashire Weavers, 
 who had come out high in the ballot for members 
 of the Parliamentary Committee, refused, in con- 
 sequence of the Eight Hours' vote, to assume 
 office. Mr. Slatter, of the Typographical Society, 
 who got the highest vote amongst the unsuc- 
 cessful candidates for the Parliamentary Committee, 
 for the same reason refused to take Mr. Birtwistle's 
 place. Consequently Burns, who was the second 
 highest amongst the unsuccessful candidates, was 
 called upon to act on the Executive, and accepted 
 the post. 
 
 Again, it will be seen, Burns's lucky star was 
 
120 JOHN BURNS 
 
 in the ascendant. Hardie, as will be shown later, 
 had done the spade work ; Burns came in just 
 in time to reap the glory. And, as was usual with 
 Burns, he immediately assumed all the credit for the 
 changes wrought in the composition of the Congress. 
 
 On the Saturday morning, after the result of 
 the first ballot for the Parliamentary Committee 
 had been announced, and before the resignations 
 of Birtwistle and Slatter had been intimated, 
 Burns was interviewed by the representative of 
 the Star (London). 
 
 "The House of Lords of Labour," he said, "is 
 done with. Henceforth the Congress will cease 
 to be chiefly a place for men who aspire to get 
 factory inspectorships and magistracies from the 
 powers that be. We have dealt the death-blow to 
 the caucuses and wirepullers. Future Congresses 
 will be more democratically constituted, managed 
 in a more business-like fashion, and less influenced 
 by the permanent officials, who too often use their 
 positions to chloroform those that they represent." 
 
 If this frequent use of the phrase "chloroform" 
 be not sufficiently conclusive as to his antagonistic 
 attitude towards the old school, perhaps the follow- 
 ing passage from the Star interview will clench the 
 matter. 
 
 " When the report of the Congress is read," he 
 said, " it will be found that whilst the old Unionists 
 were firing shots of prejudice at me, my friends 
 were passing resolutions. The Socialist character 
 of the Congress surprises ourselves. 
 
 "The incorruptibility of the new Unionists is 
 shown by the fact that one of us refused the bait 
 of ninety votes in favour of his election on the 
 Parliamentary Committee — the ninety would have 
 placed him second on the list — because the con- 
 dition was that he should vote for Shipton for 
 the secretaryship. 
 
BURNS AND DUNDEE BY-ELECTION 121 
 
 " To sum up : Shipton off, Fenwick on, Pickard 
 on to help Fenwick with the eight hours. Jack, 
 Uttley, Matkin, to support. 
 
 "An hour later (added the Star) Mr. Burns 
 might have added, 'and myself,' as by the with- 
 drawal of Birtwistle and Slatter he is now on the 
 Parliamentary Committee." 
 
 Burns's election to the Parliamentary Committee 
 quickly brought about a change in his tone. 
 
 On Sunday, September 20th, speaking at the 
 Washington Music Hall, Battersea, he reported 
 on the Trades Congress. In the course of his 
 speech he said : — 
 
 " I know Labour candidates who are neither 
 fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red herring. I 
 know Labour candidates who are much wanting 
 in courage, who are very much like an Egyptian 
 chameleon, who are red five minutes, green three, 
 blue two, and yellow one, who vary their political 
 colours and opinions in proportion as they are 
 forced to do to get the votes of certain workmen 
 with whom they come in contact. We said that 
 the resolution on Labour representation was not 
 sufficient until it was accompanied by this con- 
 dition — 'That no Labour candidate should be 
 elected to Parliament, or elsewhere, unless he is 
 in favour of the Social Democratic programme — 
 nationalisation of the land, the mines, the railways, 
 and the means of production, distribution, and 
 exchange.' " 
 
 Burns's speech at the Congress on the subject 
 of Labour representation, had provoked hot replies 
 from two of the Liberal-Labour M.P.'s., John 
 Wilson and Fenwick. 
 
 Wilson was very angry with Burns, and challenged 
 him emphatically to prove that the Labour Party 
 in Parliament were tied to the Liberal Party. He 
 claimed that the Labour members were equal to 
 
122 JOHN BURNS 
 
 any one in the Congress in intelligence, and if Mr. 
 Burns would not withdraw he hurled the lie back 
 in his teeth. 
 
 Fenwick uttered a similar challenge, deprecating 
 the insinuations made about the Labour members. 
 Insinuations, said Mr. Fenwick, were easy to some 
 minds, and even congenial. The statements made 
 about the Labour members should be made 
 openly, so that they could meet them and fight 
 them. 
 
 Commenting on these speeches in his Battersea 
 address, Burns said : — 
 
 " I can only say that, if in the next Parliament, 
 they advocate the cause of Labour, if they con- 
 demn the action of the Liberal capitalists and 
 Tory landlords with half the vigour they showed 
 towards their friends at the Congress, they will 
 have little to fear of the adverse criticism of their 
 friends of the Labour movement at the next 
 Congress." 
 
 Burns was now a colleague of Mr. Fenwick on 
 the Parliamentary Committee, and it will be noticed 
 that already there was a modification of his personal 
 attitude towards his new friends. But, on the 
 general question, Burns remained as yet a Socialist. 
 Summing up the achievements of the Liverpool 
 Congress, Burns, in his Battersea report, said : — 
 
 " I am glad to say that altogether sixty resolutions 
 were passed. Now listen to this 'old' and 'new' 
 trade unionists. Out of those sixty resolutions, 
 forty-five were nothing more nor less than direct 
 appeals to the State and Municipalities of this 
 country to do for the workman what trades 
 unionism, ' old ' and ' new,' has proved itself incap- 
 able of doing. Forty-five of the sixty resolutions 
 were asking for State or Municipal interference on 
 behalf of the weak against the strong. ' Old ' trade 
 unionists from Lancashire, Northumberland, and 
 
BURNS AND DUNDEE BY-ELECTION 123 
 
 Birmingham, asked for as many of these resolutions 
 as the delegates from London, and it is a remark- 
 able and significant fact that nineteen out of twenty 
 delegates were in favour of the ' new ' trade union 
 ideas of State interference in all things except a 
 reduction of hours, and even on this we secured 
 a majority that certainly entitles we Socialists to 
 be jubilant at our success." 
 
 On the whole it will be seen that the Burns of 1890 
 was still the Burns of the Nottingham by-election 
 of 1885, of the Old Bailey oration of 1886, of 
 "Bloody Sunday," 1887, and of the Dockers Strike 
 of 1889. But the years 1891-95, the five years of 
 his membership of the Parliamentary Committe, in 
 three of which he had also a seat in Parliament, 
 told a different tale. 
 
 It will be convenient, therefore, at this stage, 
 to throw a light on the psychology of Burns, to 
 enable the reader to better understand subsequent 
 developments, not so much in his character as in 
 his actions. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JOHN BURNS 
 
 That the reader may be assured my reading of 
 Burns's pyschology is unbiased, I will put into 
 the witness box his great friend and advocate, Mr. 
 W. M. Thompson, the barrister who defended him 
 on his two appearances at the Old Bailey. Sub- 
 sequently Mr. Thompson became editor of Reynolds's 
 Ncii'spaper, and on the 28th of May 1908, he was 
 entertained at a complimentary banquet at the 
 National Liberal Club. To make the relations 
 between Burns and Thompson quite clear, I quote 
 the personal passages from the speech Burns made 
 in supporting the toast of "Our Guest," proposed 
 by Sir Walter Foster, M.P., created a peer in 1909 
 under the title of Lord Ilkeston. Burns, it is neces- 
 sary to remember, had now became a Right Honour- 
 able, and President of the Local Government Board 
 in the Bannerman Cabinet of 1906. 
 
 " I first met Mr. Thompson," Burns said, " at a 
 turbulent meeting in Hyde Park, on the top of a 
 reservoir, which I and William Morris were holding 
 against the mob, whilst Mr, Bernard Shaw was 
 hanging on to some railings, and two or three 
 gentlemen I see present were doing their best to 
 arrest all of us. I and Mr. Thompson became 
 close personal friends and political associates. 
 
 " Two or three years later I met Mr. Thompson 
 under exalted, but to me, less pleasant circum- 
 stances. It was in a spacious building, now under- 
 
PSYCHOLOGY OF JOHN BURNS 125 
 
 going reconstruction between Holborn and Ludgate 
 Hill, and on that occasion Mr. Thompson was my 
 guide, philosopher, and friend, and from his position 
 of a counsel in the well of the court the guest of 
 to-night did everything that a kindly heart, a sym- 
 pathetic mind, and an able tongue could do to get 
 me acquitted. Mr. Thompson defended me with 
 ability, eloquence, and kindness, and I am glad to 
 say that after a speech, a kind of epilogue from 
 myself, I got off, but Mr. Thompson had done the 
 best part of the work, and had also succeeded in 
 securing the acquittal of a then colleague, Mr. 
 Hyndman, whom I am glad to see is also here to- 
 night, testifying to Mr. Thompson's services to the 
 people. 
 
 "It would not be proper for me, as a Cabinet 
 Minister, if I did not come here to testify to 
 Mr. Thompson personally, as I now do, for the 
 way he has stood by me since that time, and has 
 done his best to help me to the position I now 
 occupy. 
 
 " My last word is this — and it requires some little 
 moral courage to say it — I view with positive dis- 
 favour, with some regret, and if it does not cease, 
 with some apprehension, the tendency on the part 
 of what is known as the Labour movement to 
 isolate itself from those who are not manual 
 workers. I, of course, associate myself with every- 
 thing that makes for the economic, social, and 
 political independence of Labour, but there are in 
 this room to-night at least a hundred men who 
 have never laid a brick, forged a piece of iron, 
 worked at a lathe, or sawed a plank, and for 
 Labour to deliberately, and narrowly, and foolishly 
 cut itself off from the best, the brightest, and choicest 
 spirits of mankind, simply because they have not 
 been hewers of wood and drawers of water, is to 
 cut off the power for their own advancement in the 
 
126 JOHN BURNS 
 
 future, and to inflict upon themselves a disability 
 which one day they will find the folly and mistake 
 of doing. 
 
 " 1 have a right to say this in connection with our 
 guest of this evening, because Mr. Thompson is a 
 lawyer. There is a foolish prejudice in advanced 
 ranks against lawyers in general, and some lawyers 
 in particular. I never shared it, because I used 
 their services, but it speaks volumes for Mr. Thomp- 
 son that he should have kept on with the brilliance 
 he has the work with which he has been associated. 
 Such men as he have helped the cause of the poor, 
 and have fought for the Labour movement, and I 
 hope we shall see in the political, social, and Labour 
 movements of the future that diversity of person- 
 ality, that catholicity of aim, that community of 
 impulse, which has brought us here to-night to 
 honour the guest of the evening. 
 
 " In my judgment ideas ought to be the bond, 
 aim the watchword, and tolerance the method, and 
 achievement the reward, and I say that because, on 
 the Continent of Europe, from which in many 
 respects we can get much experience and some 
 example, there is not the class difference in demo- 
 cracy which there is a tendency in certain move- 
 ments to display at this moment in this country. 
 The House of Commons wants, in the interests of 
 the poor, the disinherited, the weak, the lowly, the 
 best thoughts, the best minds, the best tongues, and 
 the best services. It matters not to me whether 
 they be lawyer or Labour leader, writer or dustman, 
 commercial man, artist, or journalist, so long as 
 they share the aims of the poor, and the effort that 
 the poor themselves are not capable of putting for- 
 ward to the extent that they might, simply because 
 they are poor. We must gather into the Labour 
 movement more men of the type of our guest of 
 this evening. Labour should do nothing to dis- 
 
PSYCHOLOGY OF JOHN BURNS 127 
 
 courage these men of other classes from coming in 
 to help the poor, and harnessing themselves to the 
 chariot of the oppressed, and yoking themselves to 
 the service of the Commonwealth." 
 
 The tone of this speech was very different to the 
 denunciations Burns frequently indulged in of men 
 like Champion (after he had cut loose from that 
 gentleman). Such men he described at the Liver- 
 pool Trade Congress as " retired touts, retired 
 clergymen, and German blacklegs," and declared 
 that the unions " should free the cause from the 
 scallawags who were fastening on to the movement, 
 and who, to serve their ends, would degrade the 
 workers." That was Burns's general attitude to- 
 wards upper and middle-class men who identified 
 themselves with the Labour movement so long as 
 he remained in it. When, however, he had left the 
 movement for a Cabinet post, but still wanted to 
 retain a connection with Labour, his eloquence in 
 favour of Liberal politicians in like stress took on 
 the phase reported above. 
 
 But this is by the way. At present we are 
 analysing Burns's psychology, and I am now 
 going to cite the testimony of Mr. W. M. Thompson, 
 the man so generously lauded by Burns, who 
 cannot be regarded as a prejudiced witness. 
 
 On July 5th, 1896, Mr. Thompson wrote as 
 follows in Reynolds's: — 
 
 " For some years we have been receiving letters 
 criticising in severe terms what the writers described 
 as the arrogant attitude of Mr. John Burns, the 
 member for Battersea, towards most persons with 
 whom he was associated and on most questions 
 with which he dealt in his public career. . . . 
 
 "As Mr. Burns becomes older he becomes more 
 intolerant, and in the class among whom his 
 activities are now expended there is now a firm 
 impression that be is suffering from an acute 
 
128 JOHN BURNS 
 
 attack of the disease which in America is known 
 as ' swelled head.' . . . 
 
 " Many were surprised that we refrained from 
 reproving Mr. Burns on the occasion of various 
 of his escapades which were generally condemned 
 in Democratic circles. We were waiting for the 
 reformation. It has not come. Mr. Burns degene- 
 rates daily. The time for plain speaking has arrived. 
 
 "The member for Battersea has seemingly a 
 notion, which can only be born of the most extreme 
 form of vanity, that when he holds a certain opinion 
 everybody else must be wrong. 
 
 "This diseased egotism carries him so far that, 
 when men do not recognise that he is always in the 
 right, he showers upon them a coarse and vulgar 
 invective as if they were his personal enemies. 
 
 "There is hardly a prominent man in the Labour 
 movement whom he has not treated in this way. 
 He must always be on the house-tops shouting, 
 ' I, John Burns, have done this or said that,' and 
 if the spectators do not applaud him he pelts them 
 with epithets carefully manufactured in the seclu- 
 sion of his study at Lavender Hill. Omit the 
 personal pronoun ' I ' from his speeches, and what 
 remains ? 
 
 "We can now begin to understand the position 
 of the Social Democrats. ' It was impossible,' they 
 said, ' to work with John Burns.' And most people 
 with whom he has been associated tell the same 
 story. Yet though Mr. Burns rails, nobody hangs 
 himself. . . . 
 
 " No one doubts that the Dockers Strike has 
 turned Mr. Burns's head. He still dreams of 
 dramatic marches at the front of a dockers pro- 
 cession. He misses the daily notoriety which the 
 chapter of accidents gave him on the occasion of 
 the great strike. And he will manufacture notoriety 
 at any cost 
 
PSYCHOLOGY OF JOHN BURNS 129 
 
 "There are hundreds of men in the Labour 
 movement of this country who have done infinitely 
 more good than Mr. Burns, but they have not that 
 gentleman's voracious appetite for flattery. Nor 
 are they eaten up with jealousy of their co-workers. 
 They allow others a due share of the credit for 
 their performances, and they disdain to work the 
 press oracle as Mr. Burns has done. 
 
 " In some characters a noble dignity accompanies 
 them through life. Others, like the proverbial 
 beggar on horseback, on their journey towards 
 respectability, assume buffoon airs of superiority, 
 and, valiant tongue-bullies, bespatter with menda- 
 cious Billingsgate those whom they have to thank for 
 whatever little notoriety they may have gained. . . . 
 
 "It is time, therefore, that a stand was made 
 against the irresponsible insolence of Mr. John 
 Burns. . . . 
 
 "God protect our people from the Socialism of 
 a man like Mr. John Burns who, if he had his way, 
 would be as autocratic as a Czar of Russia. 
 
 "We have had occasion to speak strongly of 
 other Labour Leaders before. In the interests 
 of the workers we shall fight against ' boss ' leaders 
 of any description. 
 
 "Let Mr. Burns be warned in time by the fate 
 of the frog in the fable, who swelled with pride 
 until he burst, and when fluent nonsense is trickling 
 from his tongue, remember our friendly advice. 
 
 " He has become ridiculous ; he may yet save 
 himself from being despised." 
 
 The above testimony from Burns's candid friend 
 supplies the key to his character, and will enable 
 the reader to better understand his attitude towards 
 developments in the Labour world from 1888 
 onwards, developments that we have slurred over 
 hitherto, but must now retrace our steps to more 
 fully describe. 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE DEBUT OF KEIR HARDIE 
 
 I HAVE not the shadow of a doubt that what drove 
 Burns into the Liberal camp was his chagrin on 
 discovering that the Labour movement insisted on 
 developing on lines of its own, and disregarded him, 
 while it listened with growing respect and attention 
 to the advice of Keir Hardie. 
 
 I have now, therefore, to trace the career of 
 Hardie, in so far as it influenced that of Burns. 
 
 The full story of Hardie's life and work will 
 come more appropriately in the sequel. For the 
 present only so much will be related as may enable 
 the reader to understand Burns's disgust at the 
 emergence of the man who ultimately outrivalled 
 him as a Labour Leader. 
 
 When I got down to the Trades Union Congress 
 of 1887 at Swansea, and took my seat next to 
 Maltman Barry at the press table, Barry was full 
 of expectation at what was going to happen. 
 
 During the year that had elapsed since Hull I 
 had seen little of him. He had secured a connec- 
 tion with the papers that made him independent 
 of the odds and ends of news, and it was seldom 
 our paths crossed. 
 
 When I had met him he had generally something 
 to say about Champion's plans ; that was the com- 
 mon bond of interest between us. 
 
 In this way I learned that Champion had joined 
 the London District of the Labour Electoral, but 
 
 130 
 
t-^*v 
 
 J. KEIR HARDIE (as in 1392) 
 
THE DEBUT OF KEIR HARDIE 131 
 
 had only been coldly welcomed by the Executive of 
 the district. 
 
 " But," said Barry, as soon as we had settled 
 down, "all that is going to be altered. Keep 
 your eyes and your ears open for a young fellow 
 from Ayrshire, who is present to represent the 
 Ayrshire Miners' Union. Graham has coached 
 him up about Broadhurst and Fenwick, and I 
 think I know who coached Graham. But no 
 matter. Just watch events, and if you can, give 
 the incidents of the discussion that will arise a 
 good show in your papers." 
 
 " You may depend I shall do my best to get a 
 good show," I said, "if only on account of the 
 lineage, but what is it all about ? Suppose you 
 coach me." 
 
 Which Barry kindly proceeded to do. 
 
 In this way I learned that an attack was to be 
 made on Broadhurst and Fenwick, M.P.'s, the 
 latter having been returned at a by-election, on 
 the ground that they were betraying the cause 
 of Labour by assisting candidates at the by- 
 elections whose records, from the Labour point 
 of view, were not all that might be desired. 
 
 The indictment would be based on two cases, 
 the support of a Mr. Hill in Brixton, and of Mr. 
 Brunner at Northwich. Broadhurst was implicated 
 in both instances, but Fenwick only in that of Mr. 
 Brunner. 
 
 The allegation against Mr. Hill was that, being a 
 dealer in locks, he had, in 1879, obtained a com- 
 mission from the War Ofifice, and had supplied the 
 locks ordered, not from British lockmakers, but 
 from America. Moreover, on being charged with 
 this, he had justified his action by alleging that the 
 British workmen were idle, drunken, and inefficient, 
 and that he would be sorry to have any dealings 
 with them. During the year Mr. Hill had fought 
 
132 JOHN BURNS 
 
 a by-election at Brixton for the Liberals. Mr. 
 Broadhurst had gone to speak on his behalf, and 
 though informed of his antecedents, had persisted 
 in so doing. 
 
 The Brunner allegations differed in respect that 
 they dealt with the current wages and conditions 
 at the works of Brunner, Mond & Co. of which 
 Mr. Brunner was the principal partner. Sub- 
 sequently the works were placed on an eight 
 hours' day, and the wages improved, but, at the 
 time the Swansea Trades Congress was held, work- 
 men were employed eighty-six hours a week on the 
 day shift, and eighty-two hours on the night shift, 
 for wages averaging under 30s. per week. As the 
 dividends amounted to twenty-five per cent, or fifty 
 per cent, on the original capitalisation, it was felt 
 that a candidate who was responsible for such a 
 state of affairs ought not to be supported on the 
 platform by Labour M.P.'s, and Messrs. Fenwick 
 and Broadhurst had done so. To add to the 
 gravity of the indictment against Mr. Broadhurst, 
 it was alleged that he had become a shareholder 
 in the concern, and it subsequently transpired that 
 Mr, Broadhurst, in the same month that the Con- 
 gress was held, did sell a number of shares in the 
 company, an admission that he, when all the cir- 
 cumstances were brought to his notice, regarded 
 the holding of such shares as somewhat of an 
 inconsistency. 
 
 With this information in my possession, I was 
 pretty well primed with the facts when Hardie 
 rose to open his attack, the substance of which 
 I need not repeat. It will be more interesting, 
 as Keir Hardie was destined to play a leading 
 part in the drama of Labour politics, to venture 
 an impression of him as I recollect him at that 
 time. Most of the historical portraits represent 
 Hardie when he had become grey and bald, which 
 
THE DEBUT OF KEIR HARDIE 133 
 
 happened before he was fifty years of age, making 
 him look much older than his years. 
 
 But at this time his hair was dark brown, and 
 long, and plentiful. He had a bushy brown-red 
 beard, his brow was white and spacious, not 
 bulgy — more of the Charles Darwin type ; his 
 eyes were deep-set, giving one the impression 
 that they were rather small — their colour was 
 hazel ; his nose was short and broad ; the mouth 
 and chin could not be seen. He was dressed in 
 navy blue serge, and across the double-breasted 
 waistcoat, from over the shoulder, hung several 
 long threads of thin silver chain. 
 
 When Hardie rose to speak there was no im- 
 mediate consciousness that a new force had come 
 into action. But before he had uttered many 
 sentences he gripped the attention of the Congress. 
 His utterance was low and slow, but every word 
 could be followed. As he warmed to his work 
 his voice increased in volume, and all indications 
 of hesitancy disappeared. Now and again he 
 struck a top note, with a curious pathetic break 
 in it, the sure sign of a natural orator. 
 
 As he developed his attack on Fenwick and 
 Broadhurst, those gentlemen began to betray 
 signs of uneasiness, and took nervous notes. But 
 Hardie was speaking to an unsympathetic audience. 
 He was one man leading a forlorn hope against 
 the prevailing opinion, and there was no applause 
 when, in delivering his peroration, he insisted that 
 the Labour Party should be prepared to imitate the 
 Irish Party in Parliament, and make their power 
 felt in the same way. 
 
 Both Fenwick and Broadhurst replied to the 
 attack. Broadhurst loftily rebuked Hardie, defended 
 his support of Hill and Brunner, declared both 
 gentlemen would support the Labour Party in 
 Parliament, asserted his right to political indepen- 
 
134 JOHN BURNS 
 
 dence, and declared his determination to preserve 
 it. Fenwick said that under similar circumstances 
 he should do the same again, deprecated the attacks 
 on Labour members as calculated to discredit them 
 with their constituents, and maintained there were 
 already too many parties in the House of Commons, 
 and anyattempt to establish another — even a Labour 
 Party — would mean failure and disaster. 
 
 As, for the next eight years, these two M.P.'s 
 shared the secretaryship of the Trades Congress 
 between them, Broadhurst up to and including 
 1890, and Fenwick up to and including 1894, 
 their utterances indicate the kind of resistance 
 the new ideas first voiced by Hardie had to over- 
 come. 
 
 Eventually those new ideas triumphed, but for 
 years hard fighting had to be done, and in that 
 fighting Hardie was ever the foremost figure. For 
 three Congresses — Swansea, Bradford, and Dundee 
 — Hardie fought the battle almost single-handed. 
 At Liverpool, Burns, leading the New Unionists, 
 came to his assistance. Broadhurst resigned and 
 Fenwick reigned in his stead. But before the New 
 Unionists, by forcing the Eight Hours' Day to the 
 front, compelled Fenwick to resign at Cardiff in 
 1894, Burns had gone over to the Old Unionists, 
 and, at the Congress of Cardiff, in 1895, carried 
 his famous resolutions declaring delegates ineligible 
 who were neither working at their trades nor acting 
 as permanent paid officials of their unions, a deci- 
 sion that expelled Broadhurst, Hardie, and Burns 
 himself from the Congress. 
 
 I am again anticipating, but my excuse must be 
 as before, that it is convenient, occasionally, to lift 
 the corner of the veil to give a glimpse of develop- 
 ments in the future, developments that prove the 
 correctness of the saying — Truth is stranger than 
 Fiction. 
 
THE DEBUT OF KEIR HARDIE 135 
 
 But to return to Swansea. Notwithstanding Mr. 
 Fenwick's dictum that any attempt to estabHsh a 
 Labour Party in ParHament would mean failure 
 and disaster, the Congress approved of the steps 
 taken by the committee elected at Hull to estabHsh 
 a Labour Electoral Association. 
 
 The report of that committee stated that ten 
 Labour Electoral Associations had been formed, 
 and others were being promoted. It was decided 
 to form a National L.E.A., and its constitution and 
 programme were drawn up. The programme in- 
 cluded State Payment of Members and Election 
 Expenses, Adult Suffrage, Free Education, Nation- 
 alisation of Land, Poor Law Reform, and the aboli- 
 tion of State Bounties. 
 
 Barry was by no means pleased with this pro- 
 gramme. It offended him both by its sins of 
 omission and commission. There was no mention 
 of the legal Eight Hours in it, and the inclusion of 
 the abolition of State Bounties was directed against 
 the Fair Traders, with whom he was in sympathy. 
 
 " However," he said, "it will do to be going on 
 with, and when Champion gets his foot firmly 
 planted in the organisation, the programme will soon 
 be licked into shape. Meantime, mark this," he 
 added, " before the next Congress see if this young 
 fellow, Keir Hardie, is not run for Parliament at 
 some by-election. Burns has become too big for his 
 boots since his Old Bailey oration. Besides, he has 
 not as yet a footing in the Trades Union Congress, 
 an essential to the foundation of a real Labour 
 Party. Hardie has such a footing, and, depend 
 upon it, he will make good use of it." 
 
 This was in September 1887. In the following 
 month the agitation begun which resulted in the 
 arrest of John Burns and Cunninghame Graham on 
 " Bloody Sunday," November 13th, 1887, an event 
 I have already described, and in the following year, 
 
136 JOHN BURNS 
 
 1888, Hardie fought his first Parliamentary con- 
 test at a by-election in Mid-Lanark, following 
 upon which, Hardie, Champion, and Cunninghame 
 Graham founded the Scottish Labour Party. 
 
 Graham was the first president of the Scottish 
 Labour Party, and as such I must sketch him into 
 the picture. 
 
I UNNINCIIAMIC (;RAH AM 
 
 (From tliu oil-painting in tile Glasgow ("orporation 
 Art r.allen) 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 cunninghame graham — disillusion with 
 liberalism — champion's " nineteenth 
 century" article 
 
 Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham had been 
 elected to the House of Commons at the General 
 Election of 1886 as a Liberal member for Stiding- 
 shire. He made his maiden speech in Parliament 
 in January 1887, and in the same year introduced 
 an Eight Hours' Bill for Miners, after which he was 
 regarded more as a Labour representative than an 
 orthodox Liberal. 
 
 A man more unlike the typical representative of 
 Labour .it would not be possible to imagine. One 
 of the handsomest men of his generation, the best 
 idea I can give of his appearance is to say that he 
 might have stepped right out of a canvas by 
 Velasquez. 
 
 He was a tall, lithe, young man, browned by 
 exposure on the grassy plains of Mexico, where he 
 had spent some years ranching, and generally 
 dressed in a suit of brown Melton cloth. His 
 clothes were fashionably cut, he stood erect on 
 somewhat long feet, and he had a habit, as he spoke, 
 of running his aristocratic hands backwards through 
 a thick crop of upstanding dark hair. His face was 
 long and thin, the length accentuated by the 
 high narrow forehead and the pointed brown 
 beard, and he had intuitive eyes, which burned and 
 glowed with animation. 
 
138 JOHN BURNS 
 
 Graham, as I have said, introduced an Eight 
 Hours' Day for miners. Finding that no facilities 
 were offered for its discussion, he withdrew the 
 Bill and substituted an abstract resolution. Faring 
 no better with this, and discovering that the Liberals 
 were no more sympathetic towards Labour than 
 the Tories, he unburdened his heart of the follow- 
 ing reflections on the need for a Labour Party : — 
 
 " No ! The British House of Commons, the 
 People's House of Commons, cannot spare half- 
 a-day to discuss the question of an Eight Hours' 
 Bill for the miners. Plenty of days and long weary 
 night sittings for every other subject under heaven, 
 but for the toilers under the earth not even a 
 discussion. Why should we bother about them ? 
 
 " But sometimes, sitting here in the House of 
 Commons, and reflecting on the various shams of 
 life, I wonder, I marvel if sometime or other these 
 blind Samsons will ever break their chains. 
 
 "An impulse comes, and who shall say it is a 
 wrong impulse, to endeavour (though I know it 
 would be no good) to try to explain to these men 
 how they are humbugged. Here all is wrong in 
 this political life of ours, for how is it possible that 
 a Parliament composed as ours is, can ever take up 
 Eight Hours' Bills, or anything of the sort ? 
 
 " No man like myself, no matter however much 
 he may sympathise, can ever properly represent 
 them ; and I cannot help thinking that if we but 
 only had ten or twelve Labour representatives from 
 Scotland, that it would have been impossible to 
 burke so important a question ; 600,000 men who, 
 I believe, are practically unanimous in the wish to 
 have an Eight Hours' Day by Act of Parliament are 
 no more heeded here than if they were 600,000 
 sheep, but then, in some respects they are so like 
 sheep — so patient and dumb. I want the miners 
 to think whether it is, after all, worth their while to 
 
CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 139 
 
 take such a keen interest in politics as they do, if 
 politics are to lead to nothing so far as they are 
 concerned. Of course, when one comes out of a 
 pit, dirty and begrimed, it is very refreshing to hear 
 that Mr. Gladstone has defeated Lord Salisbury on 
 some question of Egyptian policy." 
 
 Naturally, a man like Graham would welcome 
 the appearance of Keir Hardie as a Labour candi- 
 date in Mid-Lanark. Champion and Hardie were 
 both at that time members of the Labour Electoral 
 Association, and in taking the action they did, were 
 running counter to the declared policy of the 
 Labour Electoral Association, which was to dis- 
 courage three-cornered contests. Accordingly, the 
 Executive made it known that it could only endorse 
 Hardie's candidature in the event of the Liberal 
 Party adopting him, and thus enduring a straight 
 fight with the Conservatives.^ 
 
 Champion made every effort to secure this 
 adoption, interviewing the Liberal Whips, writing 
 letters to the papers, entreating the good offices of 
 Charles Stewart Parnell, but all in vain. An official 
 Liberal candidate was adopted. 
 
 In these circumstances it is to the credit of 
 Champion and Hardie that they did not flinch from 
 the ordeal. Hardie went to the poll, and came out 
 at the bottom, with 617 votes to his credit. 
 
 It was really from this Mid-Lanark fight, though 
 Champion and Hardie did not secede from the 
 Labour Electoral Association until after the next 
 Trades Union Congress, held that year, 1888, at 
 Bradford, that the Scottish Labour Party, which 
 was not actually formed until 1889, dates its origin. 
 
 The Scottish Labour Party was the John the 
 Baptist of the Independent Labour Party, from 
 which it differed mainly in this particular, that 
 whereas the I.L.P. scornfully refused to take 
 either the Tory or Liberal party into account in 
 
140 JOHN BURNS 
 
 arranging its candidatures, the Scottish Labour 
 Party generally did, as at Mid-Lanark, attempt to 
 get its candidates adopted by the Liberals. 
 
 But even the Mid-Lanark procedure gave a con- 
 siderable shock to the ordinary Labour sentiment 
 of that time, and Mr. Champion found it necessary 
 to explain and defend his policy in an article 
 contributed to the Nineteenth Century for July 
 1888, under the title of "The New Labour Party." 
 
 After describing the condition of the people, he 
 referred as follows to the Labour M.P.'s : — 
 
 " It is not now necessary, though it would be 
 easy, to speak with severity of some individuals 
 that claim to represent the interests of Labour. 
 There were, in the last House of Commons, some 
 dozen Liberal-Labour representatives. These are 
 now, have always been, and ever always will be, 
 adherents of the Liberal Party, ever ready with a 
 fidelity fully recognised by their employers, to put 
 the political necessities of the Liberals before the 
 rights of the working classes. There is some 
 evidence that the contemptuous criticism to which 
 they have been subjected has had a disquieting 
 effect upon these gentlemen, but there is no sign 
 that they are able or willing to put the rights of 
 labour before the interests of Liberalism." 
 
 Having thus impeached the Liberal- Labour M.P.'s, 
 Champion proceeded to indict the recently formed 
 Labour Electoral Association, which had proved 
 a broken reed in Mid-Lanark, and the S.D.F. 
 
 " Besides these faithful henchmen of a party, 
 not more distinguished," he wrote, "by its anxiety, 
 when in opposition, to catch the Labour vote, 
 than by its flagrant disregard, when in power, 
 of the social condition of the labourer, there are 
 'advanced' organisations which can certainly not 
 be accused of speaking with bated breath of the 
 rights and wrongs of the working man. 
 
CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 141 
 
 " Of these some profess a regard for constitutional 
 methods, and confess their inability to persuade 
 even themselves that they can achieve anything 
 in the immediate future, by quarrelling, as bad 
 workmen are said to do, with the tools at their 
 command. They declare for the social emanci- 
 pation of the worker by political means, and then 
 decide that all action must be deferred until after 
 the establishment of manhood suffrage and the 
 abolition of the House of Lords. 
 
 "Your downright, thoroughgoing Democrat, how- 
 ever, has no respect for such constitutional methods. 
 For him political reforms are a means, but not 
 in any way a necessary means, to an end. The 
 purest form of political democracy may in the 
 future supersede the class rule he now denounces, 
 but the fire-breathing Democrat is in the present 
 determined — by methods not explained, and at a 
 date which is constantly receding — to impose on 
 the majority the will of the faithful few who agree 
 with him. It is not wonderful that this policy 
 fails to gather the forces necessary to secure its 
 success." 
 
 Mr. Champion then went on to ascribe the 
 miseries of the working classes to competition. 
 
 "The possessors of wealth are enabled," he 
 said, " by the competition of the workers, to pro- 
 cure the means of life at the least possible cost ; 
 the workers, having no means of living save by 
 the barter of their labour, are compelled, in the 
 competition for permission to live at all, to under- 
 bid one another until the wage is the least that 
 will support life, and the day's work the longest 
 the human frame will endure. Nay, these limits 
 are often passed, and the life is not sustained, and 
 the human frame breaks down. These are the 
 simple facts of the case, and so long as this competi- 
 tion is allowed to go on these facts will remain." 
 
142 JOHN BURNS 
 
 This led Mr. Champion into an argument for 
 the limitation of the working day to eight hours, 
 and a declaration that — 
 
 "The Labour Party sets before itself the task 
 of furthering the interests of the working class, 
 by securing the legislative restriction of competition 
 through the compulsory reduction of the hours 
 of labour. The question which will interest the 
 practical politician — who knows the difficulty of 
 rousing the House of Commons to action on such 
 matters, and the immense power of vested interests 
 in that House — is how the force can be found to 
 bring such matters into the sphere of practical poli- 
 tics. A precedent — a successful precedent — exists. 
 Methods once practised by others are now being 
 used by the Labour Party, with a success which fully 
 warrants a belief in certain and speedy triumph." 
 
 The successful precedent Mr. Champion claimed 
 to find in the policy of the Irish Nationalists, and 
 he showed that the intervention of a Labour 
 candidate in Mid-Lanark had caused "the incor- 
 poration in the speeches and addresses of the 
 other candidates of much of the Labour legislation 
 which found so much favour among the electorate." 
 In conclusion, he prophesied that candidates else- 
 where "will also learn the lesson and accept the 
 inevitable with good grace. Inured by habit to 
 the process, they will 'find salvation' on labour 
 questions when thus pressed home to them, even 
 more rapidly than they have done in regard to 
 Home Rule." 
 
 I have given this summary of Champion's article 
 in the Nineteenth Century, because it shows a modi- 
 fication of his policy from that of the time of the 
 West End riots, and laid down the lines of policy on 
 which he subsequently acted. Henceforth he was 
 a man of one idea — the Eight Hours' Day — and 
 of one method, the application of pressure on 
 
CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 143 
 
 the orthodox political parties through the agency 
 of an Independent Labour Party after the manner 
 of the Irish Nationalists under the leadership of 
 Parnell. Incidentally, he cast himself for the r61e 
 of the Parnell of the Labour Party. 
 
 But the action he had been taking, culminating 
 in the running of a candidate at Mid-Lanark, 
 aroused the hostility of the Executive of the Labour 
 Electoral Association, and at their next conference, 
 held at the same time and place as the Trades 
 Union Congress of Bradford in September 1888, 
 they virtually expelled Mr. Champion by carrying 
 a resolution declaring that no man could sit as 
 a delegate at the Annual Conference or be run as 
 a candidate by the L.E.A. who was not or had 
 not been a manual worker. 
 
 Before the following Trades Congress (Dundee, 
 1889), Champion, Graham, and Hardie had estab- 
 lished the Scottish Labour Party, and at the 
 Dundee Congress, Hardie returned to the attack 
 on Henry Broadhurst, M.P., the secretary to the 
 Parliamentary Committee. 
 
 On the report of the Parliamentary Committee 
 being presented, Hardie moved the following re- 
 solution : — 
 
 "That this Congress, recognising that a strong 
 feeling of resentment is arising in the minds of 
 trade unionists in this country against the action 
 of Mr. Henry Broadhurst, M.P., in having sup- 
 ported at elections those who were sweaters and 
 unfair employers of Labour ; by his declaration 
 that he will continue in this course in the future ; 
 and, further, by the fact that he has admittedly 
 held shares in a public company where men are 
 shamefully overworked and underpaid, declares 
 that he is not a fit and proper person to act as 
 secretary of the Parliamentary Committee of the 
 trade unionists of Britain." 
 
144 JOHN BURNS 
 
 Hardie's resolution, after a speech by Broadhurst 
 in his own defence, was rejected by 176 to 10, but 
 the spirit and ability he displayed made such an 
 impression that before the 1890 Congress, which 
 met at Liverpool, he had been adopted as the 
 Labour candidate for South-West Ham. Also, at 
 the Liverpool Congress, Hardie was reinforced by 
 Burns and a large number of new Unionist dele- 
 gates, with the result that the principles for which 
 Hardie had contended at Swansea, Bradford, and 
 Dundee were formallyrecognised bylarge majorities, 
 and Mr. Broadhurst resigned the secretaryship, 
 being succeeded by Mr. Charles Fenwick, M.P, 
 
 It was at Liverpool that Burns and Hardie met. 
 It was also at Liverpool that circumstances arose 
 which had an important influence on my own 
 career as a Labour journalist, and that brought 
 me right into the midst of the movement for the 
 establishment of an Independent Labour Party. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 I AGAIN BECOME A LABOUR EDITOR 
 
 In my introduction to this story I remarked that 
 it had never been my lot to take a prominent part 
 in the incidents recorded. But it is now necessary 
 to qualify that statement. Not that I withdraw the 
 word "prominent." Without taking a prominent 
 part I did, for the four years 1891-94, figure as an 
 essential factor in the evolution of the Labour Party. 
 
 It came about through the Liverpool Trades 
 Union Congress, when I first met the proprietor of 
 the Workman s Times. For some months I had been 
 contributing London correspondence to the Work- 
 marHs Times, which was published at Manchester, in 
 conjunction with The Factory Times, the organ of the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire textile trades. The Factory 
 Times had been estabUshed soon after the collapse of 
 my Nottingham Operative. Indeed, it was the sight of 
 a copy of that unfortunate publication which, so 
 he subsequently assured me, inspired its promoter 
 with the idea of The Factory Times. So, after all, 
 the arrow I shot at a venture did find a mark. 
 
 One thing leads to another, and the success of 
 The Factory Times, which had a great vogue amongst 
 the cotton and woollen operatives, suggested the 
 feasability of the Workman s Times, which was 
 intended for general circulation. And so it had 
 come about that my London correspondence became 
 a feature, and I made a few shillings weekly thereby, 
 which is more than I could say for my own venture, 
 
 14S k 
 
146 JOHN BURNS 
 
 which had been its forerunner. In this manner 
 the bread I had cast on the waters in 1885 began 
 to return to me, after many days, in 1890. 
 
 But the Workman's Times was already showing 
 signs that it might share the common fate of all 
 Labour papers aspiring to a national circulation 
 in those days. Mr. Champion's Labour Elector, 
 started in 1888, had been defunct for some months, 
 and Champion himself was in Australia to re- 
 cuperate his health. He was due back in 1891, and 
 intended to contest Aberdeen whenever the General 
 Election happened, but his journalistic ambition 
 was, for the moment, sated. 
 
 The Labour Elector had had one flattering period, 
 during the Dock Strike, when its circulation boomed. 
 John Burns and Cunninghame Graham joined its 
 editorial board. But they had never any control 
 over its policy. Champion, assisted by Maltman 
 Barry, who acted as sub-editor, inspired its articles, 
 and shortly after the Dock Strike, Graham and 
 Burns were so disgusted at an attack made on 
 Ernest Parke, editor of the Star, in connection with 
 Parke's conviction for libel, that they withdrew 
 from the board. 
 
 It will throw a light on the autocratic character of 
 Champion, which was responsible for so much that 
 happened to him later on, if I say here that, in the 
 same issue of the Labour Elector in which he printed 
 the repudiation, by Graham and Burns, of the 
 attack on Parke, he republished all the offending 
 matter repudiated by his colleagues. After that 
 they had no alternative but to sever their con- 
 nection with the Labour Elector, the publication of 
 which was suspended in a few months. 
 
 " Suspended " is the proper word to use here, 
 inasmuch as the Labour Elector was revived for a 
 few months in 1893, when Champion made his last 
 attempt to capture the Independent Labour move- 
 
I AGAIN BECOME A LABOUR EDITOR 147 
 
 ment, an episode I have described in my Early 
 History of the I.L.P. 
 
 With this digression we will leave the Labour 
 Elector, and return to the subject of the Workman's 
 Times. 
 
 The Workman's Times, as I have said, was in a 
 bad way at the time of the Liverpool Congress, and 
 its proprietor determined, as most of his staff were 
 delegates at the Congress, to take them into his 
 confidence and ask for their advice. As I was also 
 at the Congress, sitting at the Press table, I got an 
 invitation too. 
 
 To ray astonishment, when the staff assembled, I 
 discovered that it was composed of the prominent 
 members of the Executive of the Labour Electoral 
 Association. The secretary, T. R. Threlfall, was 
 not there, but G. D. Kelley of Manchester, Uttley 
 of Sheffield, Holmes of Leicester, Davis of Birming- 
 ham, and Millington of Hull, were present. Indeed, 
 practically the whole bevel set of the men who were 
 responsible for the Labour Electoral Association. 
 
 There was also James Mawdsley, the general 
 secretary of the Amalgamated Operative Cotton 
 Spinners, a leading member of the staff of the 
 Factory Times. Mawdsley was the man who sup- 
 plied the brains to the Trades Congress Parlia- 
 mentary Committee. He was a Conservative in 
 politics, and, at the General Election of 1900, 
 contested Oldham as a Conservative-Labour candi- 
 date, with Winston Churchill as a colleague. 
 Unfortunately he met his death through an accident 
 shortly after. 
 
 It was this man who so played upon the vanity 
 of John Burns that he became the most reactionary 
 member of the Parliamentary Committee. It was 
 Mawdsley who drafted the famous resolutions which 
 altered the constitution of the Trades Congress, and 
 made it ineligible for men like Keir Hardie and 
 
148 JOHN BURNS 
 
 Tom Mann to sit as delegates. Mawdsley drafted 
 these resolutions, but it was Burns who fathered 
 them, although in so doing he had to commit suicide 
 so far as attendance at Congress was concerned. 
 
 Well, all these gentlemen and others I have 
 forgotten, assembled at the hotel where the pro- 
 prietor of the Workman's Times stayed, and partook 
 of dinner. Then, after the tables had been cleared, 
 the condition and prospects of the paper were 
 discussed, and suggestions invited. But what could 
 such a crew, with not one practical journalist 
 amongst them, contribute of value ? 
 
 When the guests, looking somewhat crestfallen, 
 for they had expected a very different evening, had 
 departed, I stayed behind and unburdened my soul. 
 
 "You are," I said, "in quite the wrong hands, 
 and on entirely the wrong lines. These men are 
 too local in their outlook, and too hidebound in 
 their politics. I suppose you are paying them all ? " 
 
 " Up to now," he said, " I have paid practically 
 as much out in salaries as I have drawn for the sale 
 of papers." 
 
 "You must stop that," I said. "There is any 
 amount of unpaid assistance ready to volunteer for 
 a paper of the right sort. Such a paper should be 
 published in London. It should deal with Labour 
 politics from the Independent point of view, and it 
 should not be afraid of Socialism. More than half 
 of the 500 delegates at this Trades Congress are 
 Socialists, and more than 90 per cent, of the young 
 men. It is with them and their views that the 
 future lies. Publish a paper that will appeal to the 
 new ideas, and with the machinery at your command 
 I don't see why you should not score a bigger 
 success than even your textile paper has proved." 
 
 I could see that my host was impressed, but he 
 said nothing definite that night. 
 
 The next morning, however, he came to me at the 
 
I AGAIN BECOME A LABOUR EDITOR 149 
 
 Congress Press table, and asked me if I could spare 
 him an hour. He had, he said, an important pro- 
 posal to make, which could not wait, as he must 
 return to Manchester by noon. 
 
 I immediately adjourned with him to his hotel, 
 and there and then he offered me the editorship of 
 the Workman's Times, with a London office, if I 
 would undertake to run the paper on the lines I had 
 suggested. I said that with one assistant at the 
 London end I had every confidence I could fill the 
 paper with better matter than he was then getting, 
 and that it would not cost a penny, and he told me 
 to go ahead. My assistant-editor was Mr. Vaughan 
 Nash, who subsequently became principal private 
 secretary to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, when 
 he was Prime Minister in 1906. Mr. Nash was 
 taken over by Mr. Asquith on Sir Henry's death, 
 and, I have no doubt, largely inspired Liberal- 
 Labour legislation. 
 
 But that is by the way. It was under these 
 circumstances, however, that I was appointed 
 editor of the Workman's Times, and began what 
 was, during the next four years, the most fruitful 
 period of my life. It was for only four y^ars that 
 the Workman's Times lasted, but that was quite 
 a patriarchal age for a National Labour paper to 
 attain in the 'nineties of the last century. And 
 before it followed its many contemporaries into the 
 limbo of unsuccessful (financial) Labour journalism, 
 it did one useful thing. It brought into existence 
 the Independent Labour Party, for which the 
 Labour Electoral Association in England, and 
 the Scottish Labour Party across the border, had 
 prepared the ground. When one remembers that 
 the National Labour Party of 1900, derived directly 
 from the I.L.P., and that the United Socialist 
 Party of this year of grace, 1935, and the Socialist 
 Government it supports is descended from the 
 
150 JOHN BURNS 
 
 National Labour Party, one is gratified to have 
 had a share, however humble, in the beginning of 
 such a great movement. 
 
 It is of those humble beginnings that I have now 
 to tell. 
 
 It was in September 1890 that I made my 
 arrangement with the proprietor of the Workman's 
 Times. By the end of the year I was ready to 
 take over the paper. In Christmas week, 1890, the 
 Manningham Strike, Bradford, occurred. And it 
 was from the Manningham Strike that the Bradford 
 Labour Union, the first of the strictly Independent 
 Labour organisations, and the nucleus round which 
 the Independent Labour Party ultimately formed, 
 arose. 
 
 Moreover, it was as the Parliamentary candidate 
 of the Bradford Labour Union that Robert Blatch- 
 ford, in the days before his paper, the Clarion, was 
 founded, first laid down the principles of uncom- 
 promising independence in political affairs which 
 distinguished the Independent Labour Party. 
 
 Blatchford emphasised these principles, and the 
 essential Socialism of the I.L.P., on every occasion 
 during his short candidature for East Bradford, 
 a candidature eventually abandoned because of 
 his rupture with the Sunday Chronicle, and the 
 absorbing work of founding the Clarion. In the 
 interregnum Blatchford, for a short season of 
 eight weeks, wrote six columns weekly for the 
 Workman's Times, partly topical notes, and partly 
 economic argument. When Blatchford left us for 
 the Clarion, I took up the parable, dealing prin- 
 cipally with the necessity of political independence. 
 Ultimately I made an appeal to the readers of the 
 paper for the names and addresses of those in 
 favour of the establishment of an Independent 
 Labour Party. During 1892 no fewer than 3500 
 such names and addresses came to hand, and 
 
I AGAIN BECOME A LABOUR EDITOR 151 
 
 week by week the adherents formed themselves 
 into local branches of the still nebulus I.L.P. 
 In this way some eighty branches were established 
 in that year, and on January 13th, 1893, delegates 
 from these branches and some outside bodies met 
 at Bradford and formally instituted the I.L.P. 
 
 During all this time Champion, who had returned 
 from Australia in the latter part of 1891, was 
 making every effort to capture the Workman's 
 Times 2iS a means to dominating the I.L.P. Failing 
 in this he re-issued, in January 1893, concurrently 
 with the Bradford conference, the Labour Elector, 
 most of the writing in which was done by Maltman 
 Barry, his sub-editor. In all this Champion was 
 financed from the soap subsidies, and the newly- 
 elected National Administrative Council of the I.L.P., 
 of which I was a member, found themselves in the 
 unhappy position that they were compromised by 
 Mr. Champion's irresponsible activities. Some one 
 had to bell the cat, and I undertook to do it. Those 
 who are curious about this episode will find the 
 story related in detail in my The I.L.P. : lis Origin 
 and Early History. Suffice it here to say that 
 the controversy resulted in Champion disgustedly 
 shaking the dust of the I.L.P. from his feet and 
 returning to Australia, a disappointed man, princi- 
 pally because he was in too much of a hurry to 
 allow events to develop naturally. Had he exer- 
 cised more patience he might have found his way 
 into Parliament, where John Burns and Keir 
 Hardie, both his prot^gds, had secured seats at 
 the General Election of 1892. 
 
 With this explanation I must now bid good-bye 
 to Champion and return to a description of the 
 relation between Burns and Hardie in the Parlia- 
 ment of 1892-95. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 KEIR HARDIE IN PARLIAMENT 
 
 The ante-Parliamentary experiences of Burns and 
 Hardie were both like and unlike. The points of 
 parallel were these. 
 
 Both men had been associated with Champion, 
 who had found the money for both in their first 
 essay to enter Parliament. In each case the 
 relationship with Champion had relaxed, but in 
 neither, at the time Burns and Hardie entered 
 Parliament, had it been finally severed. 
 
 Both Burns and Hardie had made their mark 
 in the Trades Congress as assailants of the Old 
 Unionists, and especially of Henry Broadhurst, 
 M.P., as typifying that school in its opposition to 
 the legal Eight Hours' Day and its friendliness 
 to Liberalism in politics. 
 
 Both men had won their seats in Parliament in 
 virtual defiance of Liberalism. Burns consistently 
 declined to become the nominee of the Battersea 
 Liberal Association. Hardie made no approaches 
 to the South-West Ham Liberal Association. Yet 
 both the Liberals of Battersea and South-West 
 Ham, choosing the least of two evils, declared for 
 the Labour candidates just prior to the polling day. 
 
 Both Burns and Hardie were, at the time of 
 their election to Parliament, avowed Socialists. 
 True, Burns had discarded the Social Democratic 
 Federation, but he still held by its Socialist doc- 
 trines. To balance this Hardie was a member of 
 the Fabian Society, and took a delight in empha- 
 
 152 
 
KEIR HARDIE IN PARLIAMENT 153 
 
 sising his Socialist beliefs. His formula was that 
 he was a Democrat in politics, and a Socialist in 
 economics. 
 
 On the whole, judging from the known ante- 
 cedents of the two men, those were justified who 
 believed that Burns and Hardie would work hand 
 in hand together in Parliament. 
 
 But, while the points of likeness were so plain, they 
 were really surface likenesses only. The two men 
 differed essentially in temperament and character. 
 
 Burns had burnt out the fierce enthusiastic 
 zeal that distinguished him up to the time of his 
 election to the London County Council and his 
 leadership of the Dock Strike. Politically, his 
 campaign became parochial, confined strictly to the 
 constituency of Battersea. Economically, Burns 
 was obsessed with the problems involved in the 
 administration and good government of Greater 
 London — the area of the London County Council. 
 Moreover, he was already experiencing the seduc- 
 tive influence of Lord Rosebery, the first chairman 
 of the L.C.C. 
 
 Not so Hardie. His missionary zeal glowed 
 with greater fervour day by day. Already he was 
 the virtual leader of the Scottish Labour Party, 
 which had sufficient vigour to run eight Inde- 
 pendent candidates at the 1892 election. Contem- 
 poraneously with that election the foundations of 
 the English Independent Labour Party were being 
 laid at Bradford, where Ben Tillett was the candi- 
 date of the Labour Union ; at Manchester and 
 Salford, where Blatchford was gathering the forces 
 together ; at Halifax, where almost immediately the 
 first of the I.L.P. by-elections was to be fought, 
 and at many other places too numerous to mention. 
 Hardie was as yet unknown in these English 
 districts, but his prophetic eye foresaw a great 
 field for usefulness in the English provinces imme- 
 
154 JOHN BURNS 
 
 diately his calling and election for South-West 
 Ham became secure. 
 
 To sum up — Burns, immediately he was elected 
 to Parliament, seems to have been overcome by an 
 exposition of prudence. Massingham, then Lobby 
 correspondent for the Daily Chronicle, took him in 
 hand as coach, and impressed him with the im- 
 portance of not sinning against the convention- 
 alities. As Burns said to me, he had made up his 
 mind not to make a fool of himself in Parliament. 
 Hardie, on the other hand, deliberately set himself 
 to make war on the Parliamentary conventions. 
 To him. Parliament had no value except as a 
 platform from which he could appeal to the gather- 
 ing cohorts of Labour in the provinces. 
 
 Now, if Burns had been so much the superior in 
 ability as he imagined, Hardie might have been 
 compelled to follow Burns's lead. But, to his 
 astonishment. Burns discovered, as did the whole 
 House of Commons, that this uncouth apparition 
 in a glengarry cap and purple comforter had com- 
 mand of a perfect House of Commons style of 
 address. He proved that in his maiden speech, 
 delivered on Tuesday, February 7th, 1893, in mov- 
 ing an amendment to the Address on the Unem- 
 ployed question. 
 
 I here quote certain passages from a descriptive 
 account of the scene contributed to the Workman s 
 Times by the lamented " Elihu " (Samuel Washing- 
 ton), the author of a series of illuminating pamphlets, 
 whose early death was a great loss to the Labour 
 movement : — 
 
 " After the commotion and bustle of the division 
 upon the previous amendment had subsided, and 
 honourable members had trooped back into their 
 places, the member for West Ham was called upon 
 to move his amendment relative to the unemployed 
 in a House inspired by a peculiar air of curiosity. 
 
KEIR HARDIE IN PARLIAMENT 155 
 
 " The House was quite full, and as Keir Hardie, 
 with quiet deliberation, rose to his feet, honourable 
 members settled themselves in their places with an 
 air of assumed unconcern, as being unwilling to 
 exhibit any vulgar curiosity as to what this man 
 of the people might have to say now he was 
 among them. 
 
 " By slow degrees as — still with the same quiet 
 deliberation — he proceeded to state his case for the 
 unemployed, honourable members deigned to pay 
 a more direct attention to him, finding the gear a 
 man chooses to place on his head by way of cover- 
 ing to be no really reliable sign of the quality of 
 brain that may lie under it, for this man — whose 
 cap and muffler had been a matter of derision to 
 them — appeared now to be something more than 
 cap and muffler, and from commencement to close 
 of a clever and incisive speech he held the House in 
 closest attention, and dexterously hoisting now one 
 now another section of the House upon the point 
 of his spear, showed a play of skill for which honour- 
 able members seemed to have been unprepared. 
 
 "As Hardie passed from point to point in his 
 temperate, intelligent statement of the claims of 
 the common people, the House appeared to realise 
 in some measure the phenomenon that had come 
 along in a cap and scarf, and in a pair of ill-fitting 
 trousers. For the first time the governors of the 
 people, who have governed so long for their own 
 profit, are come face to face with one of the people 
 whom they have governed. A man who can stand 
 and look out at them from clear, honest eyes, who 
 is not there to ape their dress and manners and 
 affect to be ashamed of his own class, but who is 
 there as the first of a new type of legislator, to 
 whom they are slowly, perhaps, but surely to give 
 place. A man who is there as the advance guard 
 of an army who will render clear the meaning of 
 
iS6 JOHN BURNS 
 
 the phrase, that government shall be of the people, 
 by the people, and for the people. 
 
 " Perhaps the most amusing feature of the inci- 
 dent was the change which gradually stole over the 
 two front benches as Hardie unfolded his message 
 to the House. The occupants of these benches at 
 the outset had disposed themselves in the customary 
 variety of attitudes prepared to lend, say, half an 
 ear to the new member, and were stirred with just 
 the faintest curiosity, and a slightly supercilious 
 curiosity at that, to hear what was coming. The 
 Right Honourable A. J. Balfour was at his limpest, 
 and, together with the rest of the youthful flower 
 of the Conservative Party, seemed to feel it an 
 awful bore, you know, but something that must be 
 endured. John Morley contemplated the speaker 
 with a mildly philosophic gaze. Harcourt looked 
 contemplatively at a pile of paper upon the table, 
 and the Grand Old Man lay back with his chin in 
 his breast looking at the floor. 
 
 "As Hardie developed his points these two 
 usually impassive front benches visibly stirred. 
 When Hardie tripped the Liberals on the protec- 
 tion business, Balfour gathered himself sufficiently 
 to turn round and look over his shoulder at him, 
 and Gladstone reached a book from the table, and, 
 assuming to read it, kept a furtive eye on him 
 during the rest of the proceedings ; and by-and-by, 
 when Hardie sprung another point on them, the 
 Old Man turned swiftly with a remark to Harcourt, 
 then as swiftly to the one next him on the other 
 side, and subsided into watching again. By the time 
 Hardie got through, they were all eyes and ears. 
 
 " Upon the principle of saving his best wine for 
 the last, Hardie brought his speech to a conclusion 
 by an appeal to the Irish Party. These unem- 
 ployed, he said, all told number four miUions or 
 more ; they are a nation. If the Queen's Speech 
 
KEIR HARDIE IN PARLIAMENT 157 
 
 had contained no mention of Home Rule, you who 
 represent Ireland would have brought forward an 
 amendment to the Address with no consideration 
 as to whether or not it would imperil the Govern- 
 ment. There is no mention of this nation of the 
 unemployed in the Queen's Speech ; why should any 
 consideration of imperilling the Government prevent 
 your supporting an amendment on their behalf ? 
 
 "Then, by way of climax, his voice deepening 
 and becoming even more earnest, he said, in tones 
 that rang through the House, I am told my amend- 
 ment, if it should pass, will be a vote of censure 
 on the Government. It is meant as a vote of 
 censure ; any Government that can ignore this 
 question of the unemployed, and that yet claims to 
 represent and guard the interests of every class of 
 the community, is unworthy the confidence of the 
 House of Commons and of the nation. 
 
 "And that concluded a memorable and epoch- 
 making speech." 
 
 Burns was not in the House to support Hardie. 
 He had a good excuse for not being present when 
 Hardie moved his amendment, seeing that he was 
 at Halifax helping the Labour candidate in the 
 first of the three-cornered contest fought by the 
 Independent Labour Party, which had been organ- 
 ised on a national basis only the preceding month 
 at Bradford. The election occurred in the week 
 Hardie moved his amendment, the I.L.P. candi- 
 date, John Lister, polling 3028 votes, as against 
 4294 cast for the Conservative, and 4617 for the 
 victorious Liberal. 
 
 As yet, it will be seen, there was no open rupture 
 between Burns and Hardie, but his intervention in 
 the Halifax fight was the only assistance Burns 
 ever gave to the candidates of the I.L.P., and not 
 long afterwards Burns and Hardie began to drift 
 definitely apart in the House of Commons. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 BURNS AND HARDIE AT CROSS PURPOSES 
 
 The success achieved by Hardie in his maiden 
 speech in Parliament established him as the un- 
 disputed leader of the Independent Labour Party 
 movement. 
 
 He had been training for it for some years. His 
 association with the Labour Electoral Association, 
 his secretaryship of the Scottish Labour Party, and 
 his election for South-West Ham were all steps to 
 the position. But if Burns, after his election for 
 Battersea, had recognised the signs of the times, 
 instead of regarding the nascent I.L.P. as likely to 
 be an ephemeral organisation, the leadership might 
 have fallen to his lot. 
 
 Hardie, in all the months intervening between 
 the General Election of 1892, and the formation of 
 the I.L.P. in January 1893, had been cultivating 
 the English provinces, then opened up to him by 
 his success in South-West Ham. He had been 
 ready to go anywhere to address meetings in 
 connection with the new movement. When the 
 Trades Union Congress met at Glasgow in Sep- 
 tember 1892, Hardie took the chair at a meeting 
 at which authority was given to convene the 
 Bradford Conference. When the Conference 
 assembled Hardie was voted to the chair. Then 
 he went right from the Conference to the opening 
 of Parliament, and set his seal to the leadership 
 of the new movement by the speech described in 
 the previous chapter. 
 
 ■58 
 
BURNS AND HARDIE 159 
 
 By this time Hardie must have become convinced 
 that it would be hopeless to expect to work 
 harmoniously with Burns. He had deferred to 
 him during the short session of 1892, suggesting 
 this and that course, and offering to support 
 Burns if he would do something. When, however. 
 Burns refused to make a move, Hardie had the 
 courage to go ahead. 
 
 Similarly, in the matter of the Unemployed 
 Amendment to the Address, Hardie had volun- 
 teered to second such an amendment if Burns 
 would move it. But Burns's ardour for the un- 
 employed had cooled considerably since the days 
 of 1886-87. On the very day that Parliament 
 opened in 1893 the unemployed were demonstrat- 
 ing near Westminster, and their ranks were broken 
 by a baton charge of the police. But this outrage, 
 which would have fired Burns's blood in the old 
 days, had no power to move him now. His 
 attitude seemed to be summed up in the para- 
 phrase — 
 
 John Burns is in Parliament ; 
 All's right with the world. 
 
 Unable to get Burns to move, Hardie, with the 
 result we have seen, himself proposed an amend- 
 ment on the unemployed question. Burns's 
 negative attitude began to be commented upon, 
 and my notes in the Workman's Times to display 
 a tinge of impatience. 
 
 For example : On Monday, February 20th, two 
 weeks after Hardie, Burns made his maiden speech 
 in the House of Commons. My comment was as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Burns made his maiden speech in Parliament on 
 Monday night in the discussion on the introduction 
 of the Registration Reform Bill. By all accounts 
 the speech was a success, and gave proof of his 
 
i6o JOHN BURNS 
 
 ability as a debater. But the subject was not of 
 national interest. Burns was not sent to Parlia- 
 ment to defend the County Council from its 
 enemies. One speech on the unemployed ques- 
 tion will awaken louder reverberations than a 
 hundred speeches on the question whether, the 
 London County Council, having the power of 
 nominating superintendents of registration, will be 
 likely to abuse that power, and, if they do not, can 
 as much be said for County Councils in rural 
 districts ? 
 
 " Personally, I would like to see Burns get about 
 the country more than he does. His committee 
 (the Battersea John Burns Wages Fund Committee) 
 are doing neither him nor the Labour cause any 
 good by keeping him tied so closely to his County 
 Council and Parliamentary work." 
 
 I quote the foregoing, because it sums up the 
 feeling that was beginning to be entertained about 
 Burns. In the following issue of the Workman's 
 Times this feeling came to a head on receipt of the 
 following letter and resolution : — 
 
 "Sir, — At a specially convened meeting of the 
 Battersea Branch of the Social Democratic Federa- 
 tion, held on Friday, February 24th, the enclosed 
 resolution was passed unanimously, with instruc- 
 tions that the same should be forwarded to you 
 for insertion in your next issue : 
 
 "That this meeting of members of the Batter- 
 sea Branch of the Social Democratic Federation 
 considers the action of John Burns in not 
 supporting the amendment of Keir Hardie in the 
 House of Commons re the unemployed, seeing 
 the unemployed question is the pivot upon which 
 the whole social problem turns, deserving of 
 severe censure ; and, further, they strongly con- 
 demn his subsequent statement at the Washington 
 Music Hall on Sunday, February 19th, 1893, that 
 
BURNS AND HARDIE i6i 
 
 had he been in the House he would have voted 
 against it. " 
 
 On receipt of this communication I wrote an 
 article which, as it describes the situation then 
 existing, I venture to transcribe. It was headed 
 " John Burns v. Keir Hardie : Which is Right ? " 
 The article read : 
 
 " This resolution, coming from an organisation 
 in Burns's own constituency, raises a grave question 
 which can no longer be shirked. It is quite time 
 that the Labour Party in the country had an 
 understanding with the Labour Party in Parlia- 
 ment. John Burns and Keir Hardie are regarded 
 as their Parliamentary leaders. If, on almost every 
 occasion on which the Labour question comes 
 before Parliament, John Burns and Keir Hardie 
 take different views, then the Labour Party in 
 the country ought to know which of these men 
 it is advisable to follow. 
 
 " There have been three crucial points on which 
 Keir Hardie and John Burns have differed. First, 
 there was the question as to on which side of the 
 House they were to take their seats. Hardie de- 
 clared that it was the duty of the Labour Party 
 in the House always to sit in Opposition until they 
 were strong enough to form a Labour Government. 
 Burns was anxious that the Labour Party should 
 sit on the Liberal benches. Hardie's arguments 
 prevailed, and when Parliament assembled, after 
 the General Election, Burns and Hardie took seats 
 with the Opposition. In justice to Burns, however, 
 we should like to have a statement of the reasons 
 which induced him to declare in the first instance 
 for sitting with the Liberals. 
 
 " Next came the question of the autumn session. 
 Hardie was anxious that the new Parliament which 
 had been elected at a cost of so much expense and 
 anxiety, should at once set to work to discuss social 
 
 L 
 
i62 JOHN BURNS 
 
 problems, such as the problem of the unemployed. 
 He pointed out that this could be done while the 
 Cabinet were drafting their Government Bills. 
 Burns objected to this proposal, and declined to help 
 Hardie in any way. The result was that Hardie had 
 to go outside the Labour Party for a seconder to 
 this motion, which was quashed on a technicality. 
 This robbed us of the opportunity of hearing Burns's 
 reasons against Hardie's proposition for an autumn 
 session. But it is not yet too late to give them. If 
 Hardie was wrong and Burns was right, the Labour 
 Party should know it, and we invite Burns to make 
 a candid statement why he declined to support 
 Hardie on the question of an autumn session. 
 
 "We come now to Hardie's amendment to the 
 Address on the unemployed question. Burns was 
 not in the House when Hardie's amendment came 
 up for discussion. He was at Halifax speaking for 
 John Lister's candidature. The Westminster Gazette, 
 however, had previously stated that Burns would 
 vote, if he voted at all, against Hardie. Reports 
 also came to us from Halifax that Burns was 
 opposed to Hardie's amendment. We declined 
 to credit these statements unless we had the 
 authority of Burns for them. It now appears 
 that he has since stated publicly at a meeting of 
 his constituents that he would have voted against 
 Hardie if he had been present in the House. 
 This is serious. We have not such a numerous 
 Labour Party in Parliament that we can afford 
 to have divided counsels on these questions of 
 policy. We have heard Hardie's statement of the 
 reasons for his action ; now let us have Burns's. 
 We invite him to make his policy plain, and if he 
 thinks that Hardie is wrong on the three questions 
 we have named, or on any one of them, to make his 
 statement to the country through the columns of 
 the Workman's Times. He will be heard with the 
 respect due to his position and his past career, 
 
BURNS AND HARDIE 163 
 
 and instead of these resolutions of ' severe censure,' 
 we may have a better understanding all round, 
 and more united action in the future. 
 
 "So far Burns's Parliamentary career has been 
 a disappointment to his best friends, amongst 
 whom we claim to be numbered. It is a great 
 grief to thousands of workmen — not only in his 
 own constituency, but all over the kingdom — to 
 find Hardie and Burns at variance ; and we trust, 
 as a result of this appeal, that in future they will 
 work together more amicably than has been the 
 case so far. We have all a soft place in our hearts 
 for Burns, but we cannot allow the recollection 
 of past services to warp our judgment of his 
 present policy. Either Hardie is wrong, or Burns 
 is wrong. Which is it ? " 
 
 The answer to this appeal did not come from Burns 
 direct, but from the secretary of the John Burns 
 Wages Committee, and was in the following terms: — 
 
 " Sir, — The following resolution was unanimously 
 passed last Saturday at a meeting of the members 
 of the John Burns Wages Fund Committee : 
 'That this meeting fully approves of John Burns's 
 action in not supporting Mr. Keir Hardie's amend- 
 ment to the Address. ' " 
 
 My comment on this letter was — 
 
 " I suppose that's all right. So long as those 
 who pay Burns his wages are satisfied what occa- 
 sion has any one else to grumble ? For all that, 
 I heard many inquiries on Sunday in Trafalgar 
 Square as to why Burns was not present. Surely 
 Achilles has not retired to his tent ! A Trafalgar 
 Square demonstration without Burns as the central 
 figure is something strange." 
 
 At this demonstration, which was on behalf of 
 the unemployed, the "central figure" was Keir 
 Hardie, who was rapidly superseding Burns as 
 the recognised leader of the new movement. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS IN BATTERSEA 
 
 BURNs's consistent support of the Government did 
 not go long without reward. From the Workman's 
 Times of July 22nd, 1893, I quote the following 
 account of a significant incident : — 
 
 "A London correspondent gives currency to 
 the following story : A pleasant interchange of 
 courtesies between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. John 
 Burns was witnessed in the Government division 
 lobby last night by those who happened to be 
 in the immediate neighbourhood. While the fifth 
 of the long series of divisions was progressing, the 
 Prime Minister was in the crush of members wait- 
 ing for the doors to open in the narrow portion 
 of the lobby which separates the turnstile from 
 the tellers. Some minutes had to elapse before 
 any forward movement was possible, and in this 
 interval Mr. Gladstone entered into conversation 
 with his near neighbour, saying amongst other 
 things how satisfactory the first two divisions had 
 been for the Government. 
 
 "Suddenly the personality of the man to whom 
 he was talking seemed to come home to the right 
 hon. gentleman, and turning suddenly he asked, 
 ' Have I the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Burns ? ' 
 The answer being in the affirmative, Mr. Gladstone 
 asked, ' May I shake your hand ? ' and then went 
 on to tell pathetically how his sight was failing, 
 and how at times it was simply by something in 
 
 164 
 
THE PARTING OF TME WAYS 165 
 
 the contour of the person or in the tone of his 
 voice that he was able to recognise anybody. 
 From this the conversation passed to other things 
 until the doors opened, and the mass of members 
 streamed past the tellers. 
 
 "One thing said by each of the interlocutors is 
 worth preserving. ' Hard work,' said Mr. Burns, 
 'makes work, and makes one love it.' To which 
 sentiment, so much after his own heart, the Grand 
 Old Man replied, ' May you live for many, many 
 years, Mr. Burns, to put that principle into practice.'" 
 
 When one remembers the aloofness Mr. Glad- 
 stone preserved towards the ordinary member of 
 Parliament, one feels more than a suspicion that 
 this rencontre was not altogether accidental. The 
 probability is that Mr. Gladstone had been told that 
 a little politeness towards Mr. Burns might tip the 
 scale in which he was balancing between loyalty 
 to his old professions of Socialism and Labour, 
 and his new Liberal environment. 
 
 As showing how far Burns was travelling towards 
 a definite rupture with his old Socialist comrades, 
 I quote the following passage from a leading article 
 in the Workman' s Times of the same date as that 
 containing the account of the meeting with Mr. 
 Gladstone : — 
 
 "An election of more than ordinary interest is 
 pending in Battersea, owing to the resignation of 
 Mr. James Tims, the colleague of Mr. John Burns 
 on the London County Council. 
 
 "Right from the formation of the London 
 County Council, Mr. Burns and Mr. Tims have 
 been the representatives of Battersea, and as they 
 were both workmen, and were the only two work- 
 men returned to the first County Council, it was 
 long the boast of Battersea, and of Mr. Burns in 
 particular, that Battersea was leading the way in 
 Labour representation. 
 
i66 JOHN BURNS 
 
 "Well, Mr. Tims has now resigned, and there 
 was an opportunity of selecting a successor from 
 the ranks of the working classes, but the Battersea 
 Labour League, by forty votes to seven, have de- 
 cided to nominate Mr. Willis, a gentleman who 
 is described by Mr. Verdun, secretary of the 
 London Building Trades Federation, as 'not a 
 workman, not a Socialist, not a trade unionist, 
 and not a teetotaller,' qualifications, Mr. Verdun 
 went on to say, which Mr. Burns had previously 
 held to be necessary. 
 
 " The consequence is that the Battersea Branch 
 of the Social Democratic League have nominated 
 Mr. H. B. Rogers, a member of the S.D.F., and a 
 trade unionist, and the London Building Trades 
 Federation, at a special conference consisting of 
 eighty-five delegates, have passed a resolution re- 
 questing all trades unionists to support H. B. 
 Rogers, ' the only bona fide Labour candidate,' and 
 protesting against the way in which an official 
 Liberal has been foisted on the constituency, 
 while at the annual demonstration of the Navvies' 
 Union, held in Regent's Park, on Sunday, re- 
 solutions were passed at all the platforms to the 
 effect that Battersea ought to be represented by 
 a working man, and that Mr. H. B. Rogers was 
 the only candidate worthy of support. 
 
 " Notwithstanding all this endorsement, not only 
 from inside but outside the constituency, the Daily 
 Chronicle calls upon Mr. H. B. Rogers to retire on 
 the express ground that ' Mr. Burns ought to be 
 the best possible judge of Socialist tactics in 
 Battersea, and he, we observe, not only supports 
 Mr. Willis with all his strength, but has nominated 
 him.' We have here all the materials for a very 
 interesting election, without taking into account 
 that there is a Conservative in the field who hopes 
 to take advantage of the split amongst those 
 
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 167 
 
 who have hitherto supported Messrs. Burns and 
 Tims. 
 
 " The election is interesting because of the e£fect 
 it may have upon the position of Mr. Burns him- 
 self. Mr. Burns cannot both eat his cake and 
 have it. Mr. Burns cannot exercise his deservedly 
 great influence to smooth the way of an official 
 Liberal to a position he could not hope to secure 
 without his aid, and at the same time retain the 
 support of the Social Democratic Federation, who, 
 notwithstanding their personal quarrel with Mr. 
 Burns, have always voted for him at the polls. 
 There is no branch of the Independent Labour Party 
 in Battersea, or the members would be compelled 
 by the very terms of their personal pledges to take 
 sides with the S.D.F. The two trades unionist 
 bodies already quoted have taken the same side. 
 
 "Mr. Burns has taken his stand, and will no 
 doubt carry his man, but it may be at a cost he 
 has not yet estimated. Already correspondents are 
 threatening retaliation when Mr. Burns presents 
 himself for re-election. We should deplore any 
 such opposition to Mr. Burns, and therefore we 
 regret what we cannot but condemn as a false step 
 on the part of Mr. Burns and the Battersea Labour 
 League, acting doubtless under his influence and 
 advice." 
 
 As anticipated, Burns carried his man in. True, 
 Mr. Willis only polled 2817 as against 5163 cast 
 for Mr. Burns the year before, but he had the 
 majority. As this election marks the parting of 
 the ways with Mr. Burns, I make no apology for 
 quoting passages from the leader I wrote at the 
 time : — 
 
 " ' To Mr. Burns, more than to anybody else, 
 belong the honours of the Battersea victory.' Thus 
 the Daily Chronicle (London) on the Battersea 
 County Council election. 
 
i68 JOHN BURNS 
 
 "Verily, the whirligig of time brings about 
 startling reverses, and success, as well as adversity, 
 makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows. Who 
 would have prophesied, when John Burns was the 
 Social Democratic Federation candidate for the re- 
 presentation of Nottingham in Parliament, that in 
 this year of grace, 1893, we should see the same, 
 yet not the same, John Burns fighting with all his 
 might against a nominee of the S.D.F. That he 
 has done so, witness the testimony of the Daily 
 Chronicle: 'The senior member for the division 
 has put in some fourteen days of the hardest labour 
 that has ever been incurred. . . . He has worked 
 early and late in organising, in canvassing, and in 
 speaking, and he has now the satisfaction of know- 
 ing that the cause which he has espoused has 
 triumphed over all opposition.' 
 
 " That there may be no mistake as to the ' cause ' 
 Mr. Burns ' has espoused,' this description of Mr. 
 Willis is given by the Daily Chronicle : ' Mr. Willis 
 .... was one of the founders of the Battersea 
 Liberal and Radical Association, and succeeded 
 Mr. B. L. Thomson as secretary. . . . Mr. Willis 
 is now president of the Battersea Liberal and 
 Radical Association.' We need read no further. 
 
 "To account for this extraordinary change of 
 front, Mr. Burns is compelled to put forward the 
 vain theory that the nomination of an S.D.F. 
 candidate was solely inspired out of spite against 
 himself. Stripped of all the sophistries with which 
 Mr. Burns is attempting to confuse the issue, the 
 plain facts of the Battersea election are these : 
 
 "The Battersea Labour League went to the 
 nomination of a candidate with its mind made up 
 to select Mr. Willis and nobody else. The first 
 condition laid down was that the candidate must 
 be a Battersea man, and that he must be able to 
 support himself. Mr. Burns feared, as he has 
 
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 169 
 
 himself confessed, the addition of another claimant 
 to a share in the Wages Fund, hence the condition 
 that the candidate, whoever he was, must be able 
 to support himself. Seeing that only one-third of 
 the John Burns Wages Fund, again on his own 
 admission, is subscribed in Battersea, we fail to see 
 why the selection of a colleague was restricted to 
 the inhabitants of the district. 
 
 "But even the difficult conditions laid down 
 would have been surmounted had the Battersea 
 Labour League accepted the nomination of Mr. 
 Verdun, the secretary of the London Building 
 Trades Federation, himself a Battersea man, and 
 the paid servant of a body of workmen who would 
 gladly have supported him on the County Council 
 without asking for a share of the John Burns 
 Wages Fund. Mr. Verdun, a representative trade 
 unionist, was passed over for Mr. Willis, the 
 president of the Battersea Liberal and Radical 
 Association. We, and the friends of Labour repre- 
 sentation throughout the country, want to know 
 the reason why. Was there some compact with 
 the Liberals to satisfy which Mr. Burns has been 
 compelled to throw overboard every principle of 
 Labour representation he has hitherto professed ? " 
 
 Notwithstanding these developments in Batter- 
 sea, Burns still proclaimed himself to the country 
 at large as a Socialist and a believer in Labour 
 representation, and at the Belfast Trades Congress, 
 in September, 1883, took a prominent part in the 
 discussions on the Trades Congress scheme for 
 Independent Labour representation drawn up by 
 the Parliamentary Committee, of which Burns was 
 a member, in accordance with the instructions 
 given at the Glasgow Congress the year previous. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 BURNS INVEIGHS AGAINST " BOGUS " LABOUR 
 PARTIES 
 
 The outstanding features of Burns's declarations at 
 tlie Belfast Trades Union Congress were, first, a 
 declaration of war against the I.L.P., and second, 
 a reiterated avowal of his belief in Socialism. 
 
 The Parliamentary Committee's scheme for Inde- 
 pendent Labour representation was as follows : — 
 
 Labour Representation — Financial 
 
 "I. That a separate fund be established for the 
 purpose of assisting Independent Labour candi- 
 dates in local and Parliamentary elections. Con- 
 tributions to such fund to be optional. 
 
 " 2. Each society desiring to affiliate with the 
 movement shall subscribe annually to the election 
 fund the sum of 5s. per 100 members. 
 
 " 3. The administration of the aforesaid fund to 
 be entrusted to a committee of thirteen persons 
 (including secretary and treasurer), who shall be 
 elected annually at the Congress by and from the 
 delegates representing the contributing societies. 
 
 Selection of Candidates 
 
 " I. The selection of candidates in every case to 
 rest with the localities in the first instance. If at 
 any time, however, it should be impossible to 
 secure a suitable local candidate, a candidate may 
 
"BOGUS" LABOUR PARTIES 171 
 
 then be selected by the locality from a list of 
 persons approved by the committee. 
 
 " 2. All candidates receiving financial assistance 
 must pledge themselves to support the Labour 
 programme as agreed upon from time to time by 
 the Congress." 
 
 When this scheme came before the Congress an 
 amendment was moved by James Macdonald, and 
 seconded by Pete Curran, to make the last clause 
 read : " All candidates receiving financial assistance 
 must pledge themselves to support the principle of 
 collective ownership and control of all the means 
 of production and distribution, and the Labour 
 programme as agreed upon from time to time by 
 the Congress." 
 
 In support of this Socialist amendment Burns 
 spoke. He said he would support it because it 
 affirmed a principle that they, as working men, 
 must stand or fall by — if not now a few years 
 hence. He supported it because it affirmed a 
 principle which cut right to the kernel of the Social 
 and Labour problem — it stripped all the husks off 
 the party politics, whether Liberal or Tory, and 
 off five or six of the bogus Independent Labour 
 Parties that had come into existence. The time 
 had come when they should adopt a distinctive 
 Labour programme and a definite object to 
 arrive at. 
 
 Encouraged by the cheers this back-hander at 
 the I.L.P. evoked, Burns proceeded to say that he 
 regretted the amendment did not, for instance, tell 
 them what they ought to do if they found a good 
 Labour man whom they could trust putting up for 
 a seat in Parliament, and he was opposed by some 
 literary deadhead, some journalistic blackleg, or 
 wastrel, who had been converted from Liberalism 
 or Toryism, and, being anxious to get into Parlia- 
 ment, pandered to the Sociahst movement, and 
 
172 JOHN BURNS 
 
 accepted its programme so that he might sacrifice 
 himself on the altar of his country and incidentally 
 turn a few honest pennies. He denounced the arrant 
 frauds that, in the name of Independent Labour 
 and Socialism, were going about the country doing 
 everything in their power to disintegrate labour 
 and trades unionism. Till the Independent Labour 
 Party were put out of existence, there was nothing 
 between trades unionism on the one side and 
 trades unionism plus a Socialist Labour Party on 
 the other. These parties were at present separate, 
 but if they were blended together they would be 
 invincible. As an honest man and a Socialist 
 member of Parliament, he would vote for the 
 amendment. 
 
 Reading between the lines of this speech, it is 
 quite evident that Burns's object, in making it, was 
 to support the Trades Congress Labour Party as a 
 means of putting the Independent Labour Party 
 " out of existence." My comments in the Workman's 
 Times fairly well indicate the view of Burns's 
 animus, held by the advanced men at the Congress. 
 
 "History," I wrote, "tells us that the Athenians 
 tired of hearing Aristides spoken of as ' the Just.' 
 History may tell us that British workmen tired of 
 hearing John Burns describe himself as 'honest.' 
 Honesty, according to Burns's ideas, must be such 
 a rare virtue in a Labour leader that no one would 
 be suspected of possessing it did he not self- 
 trumpet it to the world. For our part we would 
 remind Burns that there is such a thing as pro- 
 testing too much. 
 
 " ' As an honest man and a Socialist member of 
 Parliament he would vote for the amendment.' 
 Why, in the name of ail that is honest, should it be 
 necessary for ' a Socialist member of Parliament ' 
 to plead 'honesty' as his justification for voting 
 for a Socialist amendment ? 
 
"BOGUS" LABOUR PARTIES 173 
 
 "Further, why should John Burns, in his character 
 as the only ' honest ' man, stoop to win the cheers 
 of the party hacks at the Congress by denouncing 
 as ' bogus ' the Independent Labour Party ? Is 
 this a declaration of war against the I.L.P. If so, 
 why ? And will Burns particularise as to who are 
 ♦ the arrant frauds ' ? There is not a single man or 
 woman 'going about the country in the name of 
 Independent Labour or Socialism' whose actions 
 afford the slightest ground for this impeachment. 
 His allusion to 'literary deadheads and journalistic 
 blacklegs' is not a cut at H. H. Champion or 
 Maltman Barry, It is intended for men hig^ in 
 the counsels of the Independent Labour Party, 
 who have come under Burns's displeasure, because 
 conscience has compelled them to speak their 
 opinion of his tactics and policy. 
 
 " Mark the illogical position such language 
 assumes. When literary men employ their talents 
 in defence of Capitalism, Liberalism, or Toryism, 
 they are the 'hirelings of the press,' or they are 
 charged, as Burns himself charged the Scotch 
 journalists during the railway strike, with accepting 
 bribes to publish misleading news. When they, at 
 much sacrifice of ' honest pennies/ definitely pro- 
 nounce for Socialism, then they are charged with 
 self-seeking, and are dubbed 'deadheads,' 'black- 
 legs,' and ' wastrels.' " 
 
 The Sociahst amendment was carried by 137 
 votes to 97. As showing the progress made in four 
 years, I may say that a similar resolution was 
 defeated at Liverpool, ruled out of order at New- 
 castle by Thomas Burt as a short cut to the 
 millennium, defeated again at Glasgow, and now 
 finally carried at Befast. Burns, of course, regarded 
 its triumph as due to himself. Indeed, at this time, 
 he was keen on establishing a Labour Party on the 
 Trades Congress basis, with himself as its Parlia- 
 
174 JOHN BURNS 
 
 mentary leader. Hardie was still undisputed leader 
 of the I.L.P., but if the I.L.P. were " put out of exis- 
 tence," where would Hardie be then, poor fellow ? 
 
 That something like this was in Burns's mind 
 no one who saw him and heard him at Belfast could 
 doubt. On the landing stage at Liverpool, on the 
 return journey, he told a correspondent of the 
 Workman's Times that he had gone to the Congress 
 "to observe several folks." He laughed genially 
 at the Sunday Chronicle's description of him as the 
 watch-dog of the Congress — ever on duty, putting 
 in his full eight hours. He talked freely of the 
 Labour Party that would come into existence as 
 the result of the Congress scheme, and began to 
 forecast the work that he would do as its leader. 
 
 " The unemployed are quiet now in Liverpool," 
 he said, " but the winter will tell. Send me along 
 to Westminster — no, to Battersea — some reports, 
 and keep me posted in what is being done. You 
 may rely on me if you want anything doing." 
 
 Burns could not get it out of his mind that it 
 was his duty to purge the Labour movement of 
 those whom he regarded as undesirables. In an 
 interview in the Daily Chronicle, he breathed out fire 
 and threatenings against those he suspected. And 
 he published the following brief opinion of the 
 Congress, which is useful as showing the trend of 
 his thoughts : — 
 
 "A useful Congress. Socialism has scored, 
 Labour has triumphed, trades unionism been con- 
 solidated, intriguers (this with a darksome brow) 
 have been checked (not chequed)." 
 
 And now, remembering that he is still in the 
 running for the leadership of the Labour Party, let 
 us leave Burns for a time, while we see how 
 Hardie fared at the Congress. 
 
 Hardie did not figure so prominently as Burns. 
 He moved the following resolution ; — 
 
"BOGUS" LABOUR PARTIES 175 
 
 " That in the opinion of this Congress, the claims 
 of Labour in Parliament should be asserted, irre- 
 spective of the convenience of any political party ; 
 and to secure this it is necessary that the Labour 
 members in the House of Commons should be 
 unconnected with either the Liberal or Tory Party, 
 and should sit in opposition to any Government 
 until such times as they are strong enough to form 
 a Labour Cabinet." 
 
 This resolution was lost, 96 voting for it, 119 
 against it. Hardie was also a candidate for the 
 secretaryship of the Parliamentary Committee in 
 opposition to Charles Fenwick, M.P. The voting 
 was, Fenwick 251, Hardie 89. Burns strongly 
 supported Fenwick, " considering him, spite of his 
 opposition on the eight hours' question, a hard 
 worker, and a rare good fellow." 
 
 Hardie summed up his impressions of the Con- 
 gress as follows : — 
 
 " A delightful Congress. Fifty years in advance 
 of the last one. The feeling shows that even the 
 older Unionists recognise Socialism as inevitable. 
 Election to the Parliamentary Committee satis- 
 factory. My own vote for the secretaryship larger 
 than I expected. Personal animus against me for 
 having fought unpopular questions in the past 
 mellowing." 
 
 This was the state of affairs at Belfast in Septem- 
 ber, 1893. The following year, Burns secured the 
 expulsion of Hardie at the Cardiff Congress, and 
 also came to a final rupture with the S.D.F. in 
 Battersea. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 BURNS AND THE S.D.F. IN 1 894 — HYNDMAN'S 
 
 IMPEACHMENT 
 
 Despite the contemptuous terms in which Burns, 
 at Belfast, had referred to " bogus " Labour parties, 
 there were many in the ranks of the I.L.P. who 
 regretted that he and others of the front rank of 
 Labour leaders still held aloof, and one of these, 
 H. Russell Smart, wrote an open letter for publi- 
 cation in the Workman's Times, inscribed "To 
 Messrs. John Burns, Tom Mann, Fred Hammill, 
 and others to whom it may apply," inviting them, 
 now that the LL.P. had been purged of all con- 
 nection with Champion and Barry, to throw in 
 their lot with the party. 
 
 I will quote a passage or two from this appeal 
 just to show that, if Burns did eventually completely 
 estrange himself from the Independent Labour 
 movement, it was not because overtures were not 
 made to him to take up a distinguished position in 
 its councils. 
 
 " We have heard a great deal," wrote Smart, " of 
 the parrot cry of Tory gold from Liberal hacks ; 
 it is time a little evidence was brought forward to 
 back it up. If there be a shadow of proof impli- 
 cating any of its members, there will be none more 
 anxious to expel the guilty than the I.L.P. itself. 
 
 " What then is to prevent you, gentlemen, from 
 
 yourselves becoming the head of the Independent 
 
 Labour Party in actual fact, as you are in reality. 
 
 176 
 
BURNS AND THE S.D.F. IN 1894 177 
 
 Why should not Burns, Mann, Hardie, Curran, 
 Hammill, Tillett, Graham, and others, be delegated 
 by their respective constituencies, present and pro- 
 spective, and combine with men of equal honesty, 
 though, perhaps, not such prominence, to form the 
 I.L.P. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the vote of the Belfast Congress 
 the trade unions will never form political asso- 
 ciations ; their power may be and is used politically, 
 but an independent political association is a neces- 
 sity of the situation. The political association exists, 
 and is flourishing, as may be judged by the work 
 it has already done. Come, then, and take your 
 proper place at its head." 
 
 With the exception of Burns, all the men named 
 in this appeal did become members of the I.L.P. 
 Burns, however, still dreamed of his Trades Con- 
 gress Party, and although, seven years later, such 
 a Labour Party was formed, it may be said here 
 that the Belfast scheme, of which Burns entertained 
 such hopes, proved still-born. At the 1894 Trades 
 Congress it was reported that only two trade unions 
 had applied for affiliation, and the project was 
 abandoned. But, of course, Burns could not see 
 so far ahead, and it is unquestionable that at this 
 time he was exceedingly sanguine about the emer- 
 gence of a " Genuine " Labour Party, with himself 
 as its leader. 
 
 Meantime, he came to an open rupture with the 
 Social Democratic Federation over the threatened 
 opposition of the Conservatives to his re-election 
 for Battersea, a normal development which, with 
 his usual exaggeration, he ascribed to the machina- 
 tions of the S.D.F. 
 
 The first I heard of this was in a letter from a 
 Battersea correspondent, which I published in the 
 Workman's Times for January 13, 1894. He wrote : 
 
 " I suppose you have heard that the Tories have 
 
 M 
 
178 JOHN BURNS 
 
 induced a man to stand in their interest at the next 
 Parliamentary election in this division. A Star 
 man had an interview with Burns on Friday last 
 with reference to the gentleman who is willing to 
 fight him, and I am sorry to say that Burns dis- 
 tinctly laid it down that the Social Democrats in 
 and out of Battersea were responsible for the Tory 
 candidature. This is a very serious statement, and 
 I am glad to say that our branch intend to discuss 
 it at their next meeting. 
 
 " Last night Burns addressed a meeting in the 
 Washington Music Hall, Battersea, and, according 
 to this morning's Daily Chronicle, Burns gave utter- 
 ance to the following statement : — 
 
 " ' I am told that I am to be opposed by a banker 
 on one side and by bigots on the other. I shall 
 sweep the floor with both of them. Finance and 
 fanaticism are to fight against a Labour man. But 
 let me say that if I am combated here, I will carry 
 the fight to every constituency where men who hold 
 these views are standing. What we did on the 
 L.C.C. we will do three times over on the Parlia- 
 mentary election. From whom am I to take my 
 marching orders ? From men who fancy they are 
 Admirable Crichtons, Pitts, and Bolingbrokes, but 
 who have not got sufficient brains to run a whelk- 
 stall. I have had enough of fighting to last a life- 
 time. In the years to come there is going to be 
 the same combat, and I am going into it with my 
 hat off.' 
 
 " Of course we are the chaps who are unable to 
 run whelk-stalls. It is pretty plain to most people 
 that Burns is going very fast to the wrong side. I, 
 for one, even now still hope that he may see the 
 error of his ways, and come back to the right path, 
 once more using his grand abilities on behalf of 
 militant Socialism." 
 
 Commenting on the above letter I wrote : — 
 
BURNS AND THE S.D.F. IN 1894 179 
 
 " Now, I don't think that is an unfriendly letter, 
 and Burns would be better advised if he would 
 make friends with his old comrades of the S.D.F. 
 He has everything to lose and nothing to gain by 
 giving the rein to invective against men who have 
 it in their power to do him an ill turn. For myself, 
 I would like to say that I should regard it as a 
 distinct disaster to the cause of labour if, by any 
 combination of avowed enemies and disappointed 
 friends, John Burns happened to be defeated at 
 the next general election." 
 
 I think it well to let it be seen that, whatever 
 was the feehng towards Burns in the S.D.F., there 
 was not, at this time, any rancour against him in 
 the I.L.P., for which I claimed editorially to speak. 
 
 But the quarrel with the S.D.F. arising out of 
 Burns's charges grew apace, and culminated in an 
 epistolary duel between Burns and Hyndman, one 
 of the few occasions on which Burns, who was 
 usually chary about putting pen to paper, ventured 
 into print. Burns's contribution to this discussion 
 is a veritable living document. 
 
 What led up to the correspondence was the 
 passing of a resolution at the Battersea Branch of the 
 S.D.F. condemning the statement Burns had made 
 as utterly without foundation, and calling upon him 
 to substantiate his charges. Following upon this the 
 allegations were commented on at the annual New 
 Year's Gathering of the London branches of the 
 S.D.F. by George Lansbury, then the S.D.F. Parlia- 
 mentary candidate for Walworth, who became the 
 I.L.P. Member for Bow and Bromley in 1910, and 
 who was in the chair, and by H. R. Taylor, a mem- 
 ber of the Executive, who had fought Bethnal-Green 
 in 1892. 
 
 Lansbury said they were accused of being sub- 
 sidised by the Tory party for the purpose of split- 
 ting the progressive vote — a charge which those 
 
i8o JOHN BURNS 
 
 who made it had to repel themselves not very long 
 ago. The best way to show Mr. John Burns that 
 it was useless for him to try that sort of business 
 was to so organise themselves that when they did 
 fight they should make a respectable show. They 
 might blackguard Mr. Burns until they were black 
 in the face, and would not hurt him in the least ; 
 but one or two really good Social Democratic 
 victories would do more to close the mouth of Mr. 
 Burns and all the other Fabian permeators than 
 anything else. 
 
 Taylor said John Burns's charge against them 
 was a foul lie, intended as an excuse to enable him 
 to go down into the constituencies and oppose 
 Socialist candidates. John Burns (a Voice : " Mister 
 Burns," and hisses) had thrown off the mantle of 
 Social Democracy and adopted that of Liberalism. 
 He was doing the work for which he had so often 
 denounced Henry Broadhurst, and there was room 
 for no more Broadhursts in the Labour movement. 
 It was, however, better to have a known enemy 
 than a false friend. 
 
 Hyndman was present at this meeting, and de- 
 livered an address, but does not seem to have 
 referred to the Burns episode. He made up for 
 it next day, however, by writing to the Star to 
 " explain " why Burns was denounced at the S.D.F. 
 meeting. 
 
 Hyndman's letter appeared in the London Star 
 of date i6th January, 1894. It read as follows : — 
 
 " Sir, — You will perhaps allow me to explain, as 
 an original member of the Social Democratic Fede- 
 ration, how it came about that Mr. John Burns, 
 M.P., was denounced by Trade Unionists from 
 the platform, and hissed by the crowded audience 
 at the general meeting of the London members of 
 the S.D.F. 
 
 " I may remark, before giving those reasons, that 
 
BURNS AND THE S.D.F. IN 1894 i8i 
 
 so far from rending those who succeed in carrying 
 out the principles we preach, as you say we do 
 in your note this evening, we welcome back all 
 who have honestly quitted our organisation, and 
 who see their way to cordially work with us 
 again. Thus we are on the best of terms to-day, 
 I am glad to say, with William Morris. Of those 
 who have gone away in the past and are now once 
 more members of the body I need only mention 
 Belfort Bax, James Macdonald, Pete Curran, and 
 Andreas Scheu ; but I have reason to believe that 
 no long time will elapse before other well-known 
 champions of the ' New Unionism ' will be found 
 under the red banner of the S.D.F. 
 
 "Why then was Mr. John Burns attacked and 
 hissed when Keir Hardie (though he, too, does 
 not belong to us) was loudly cheered ? 
 
 " I. Because no sooner was Mr. John Burns 
 elected on the L.C.C. for Battersea as an indepen- 
 dent Social Democrat, chiefly by the enthusiastic 
 and wholly unpaid efforts of the members of the 
 Battersea Branch of the S.D.F., than he left the 
 organisation, did his utmost to break it up, and 
 vilified his old comrades all round. 
 
 " 2. Because he was hand and glove with Mr. 
 H. H. Champion, both before and after Mr. 
 Champion was expelled from the S.D.F. ; was 
 one of the editorial committee of the Labour 
 Elector, and gave Mr. Champion the earnest letter 
 of introduction to the workers of Australia, which 
 enabled that gentleman to do so much mischief 
 there. 
 
 " 3. Because ever since Mr. John Burns has been 
 a member of Parliament, instead of maintaining an 
 independent attitude, he has become a thorough- 
 going supporter of the Capitalist Liberal Party, 
 going so far as to act as a sort of an amateur ' whip ' 
 to that party, and voting for the institution of a 
 
i82 JOHN BURNS 
 
 House of Lords in Ireland at the same time that 
 he was very properly attacking the House of Lords 
 in England. 
 
 " 4. Because, instead of supporting Keir Hardie 
 in his efforts to force the hand of the Liberal 
 Government on the question of the unemployed, he 
 has maintained a very doubtful attitude throughout 
 on this important matter. 
 
 " 5. Because he has refused to attack and censure 
 the Home Secretary for those Featherstone shoot- 
 ings of which Mr. Asquith accepted 'the full 
 responsibility,' and as chairman of the Trade Union 
 Parliamentary Committee, as I am informed, has 
 shown himself more moderate on this matter than 
 Mr. Henry Broadhurst. 
 
 "6. Because at the by-election for the L.C.C. 
 at Battersea he supported, to the full extent of 
 his power, Mr. Willis, an official Liberal and a 
 shopkeeper, against his own old comrade and 
 intimate friend, H. B. Rogers, a workman, a 
 Trade Unionist, and a Social Democrat. 
 
 " 7. Because in an interview with a Star reporter 
 the other day he actually stated that the Social 
 Democratic Federation were acting in conjunction 
 with the Tories, and accepting pecuniary aid from 
 them in order to turn him (Mr. John Burns) out 
 of the representation of Battersea. 
 
 " 8. Because last Sunday week, when he repeated 
 this monstrous misrepresentation in his speech 
 at the Washington Music Hall, he also threatened 
 that, in revenge for this invented injury, he would 
 oppose Lansbury in Walworth and me in Burnley. 
 
 " Mr. John Burns has become, in short, an active 
 and bitter enemy of the Social Democratic Party, 
 and a chosen vessel of one of the great political 
 factions. You cannot expect that Social Demo- 
 crats, who have little or nothing to hope from 
 either Liberal or Tory, will readily forgive such 
 
BURNS AND THE S.D.F. IN 1894 183 
 
 a succession of backslidings as those enumerated 
 above. We may be fools, fanatics, or ' Tory tools,' 
 and all the rest of it, but at any rate the Social 
 Democratic Federation is the only Socialistic 
 organisation in the country, and we are gaining 
 ground throughout Great Britain to-day at a 
 pace which surprises even me. This, too, though 
 Mr. Burns and his allies of the Fabian Society 
 have done their utmost to upset and injure us 
 for years past." 
 
 Burns's reply did not appear until a week had 
 elapsed. Evidently he took great pains with its 
 composition, and as it is really his laboured 
 apologia it is something in the nature of an his- 
 torical document. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 BURNS ON HIS DEFENCE 
 
 The value of John Burns's reply to Hyndman 
 counts in this. In it he not only sketched out 
 his progress from 1885 to 1894, but suggested 
 the lines in which he intended his future to run. 
 We are thus able to judge him by his own tes- 
 timony. 
 
 Burns wrote : 
 
 "Sir, — In your issue of 16 January Mr. Hyndman 
 delivered himself of a tirade of abuse of myself of 
 which I had intended, as usual, taking no notice. 
 I am, however, requested — unnecessarily, I think 
 — by the Battersea Labour League, to answer what 
 is, after all, only a repetition of old, unfounded, 
 and trivial charges, brought up-to-date, spiced by 
 jealousy, salted with personal hate, and served up 
 with wanton exaggeration. 
 
 "To commence with, Mr. Hyndman had no 
 authority to make an attack upon myself under the 
 assumed concurrence of William Morris and others 
 who neither share his malignancy nor approve his 
 pettiness. 
 
 " But it will be best to take Mr. Hyndman's 
 charges consecutively. 
 
 "i. Leaving the Social Democratic Federation 
 and trying to break it up. 
 
 "I practically left the S.D.F. in 1888, as after 
 November 1887 I confined myself principally to 
 local work in Battersea, as I was disgusted with 
 
 184 
 
BURNS ON HIS DEFENCE 185 
 
 the incompetency of the Central Executive, and 
 above all by the suspicious and quarrelsome 
 character of Mr. Hyndman, who has been the 
 direct cause of alienating from the S.D.F. all the 
 present day Socialists of standing and ability. 
 The final cause of my leaving, however, was the 
 conduct of the Executive over the Kennington 
 election, 1889, where, failing to act themselves, 
 they objected to others, notably myself, for sup- 
 porting, with the approval of the Battersea members 
 of the S.D.F., Mr. Beaufoy, whose adoption of the 
 eight hours and its concession to his own workmen 
 led me to give him my support. This incident 
 was the last straw that gave the Battersea camel 
 the hump. After this, however, I lectured for the 
 Battersea Branch of the S.D.F., and am now on 
 friendly terms with the bulk of the local Social 
 Democrats, both within and without the S.D.F., 
 the majority of whom are on my Election Com- 
 mittee. I have also been invited by many branches 
 of the S.D.F. during the last two years to lecture 
 for them ; have received, November 1893, unani- 
 mous resolutions of thanks from the Strand Branch 
 of the S.D.F. for my 'outspoken statement of the 
 Socialist position' in Parliament, and, greatest 
 honour, or humiliation, of all, have even been 
 asked to go to Burnley to support Mr. Hyndman's 
 candidature. 
 
 " 2. My connection with Mr. Champion. 
 
 "Till 1890 Mr. Champion's work for labour 
 generally warranted the friendly relations that 
 existed between us. Since 1890 I have not worked 
 with him. What is more, I entirely disapprove of 
 much that he has done, and more that he has 
 attempted. Because I differ with Mr. Champion is 
 no reason why, at the instigation of Mr. Hyndman, 
 I should coarsely assail him. Mr. Champion, with 
 all his faults — and in vain I have tried to reduce 
 
1 86 JOHN BURNS 
 
 them — was a man of courage. This Mr. Hynd- 
 man, with all his self-assertion, could never claim 
 to be. 
 
 "3. I have not been independent enough in 
 Parliament. 
 
 " Who is to judge ? Mr. Hyndman or my con- 
 stituents ? Up to the present they say I have, 
 in spite of Mr. Hyndman's denial. But what is 
 the test of independence ? Making an independent 
 ass of myself ? If so, I am not so independent of 
 common sense and the responsibility of my official 
 position in the Socialist and trade union move- 
 ment as to do it. I did not go to Parliament to 
 be a political pantaloon. Neither do I believe with 
 Mr. Hyndman that we should take the guts out 
 of the political concertina to see where the Socialist 
 wind comes from. There is, however, an oflBcial 
 test of independence — the division lists. They dis- 
 close that on Home Rule, employers' liability, 
 miners' eight hours, parish councils, payment of 
 members, eight hours and higher wages for Govern- 
 ment employees and dangerous trades, &c., I have 
 voted with the Government when they were on 
 the right road, and against them when they were 
 on the wrong, or when they did not go far 
 enough. I have twenty-two votes recorded against 
 the Government to Mr. Keir Bardie's fourteen. 
 There are two voting lobbies in Parliament, and 
 frequently one has either to choose between the 
 cowardice of abstention and the acceptance of 
 compromise. I am preferably for the latter as the 
 lesser of two evils, even though it offends Mr. 
 Hyndman. 
 
 "4. That I supported an Irish House of Lords. 
 
 "This is not true, as on 6th July, 1893, on the 
 question I voted against the Government, the figures 
 being 315 for the Government, 300 against. To 
 show how compromising one has to be in doing 
 
BURNS ON HIS DEFENCE 187 
 
 good things, I was sandwiched between Lord 
 Burghley and Viscount Bury in the division list. 
 
 "5. I have not supported Mr. Keir Hardie, but 
 maintained a doubtful attitude upon the unem- 
 ployed question. 
 
 "This, again, is untrue, as upon several occa- 
 sions when the adjournment of the House has been 
 abortively moved — contrary to my advice as a 
 matter of policy — I have stood up and supported 
 Mr. Hardie. When it was moved upon the Address 
 I was at Halifax, supporting Lister, the I.L.P. 
 candidate, against Liberal and Tory ; and the last 
 time, when through mismanagement it was con- 
 fined to a narrow issue, I was ill. But assuming 
 I had been in the House, I should not have sup- 
 ported Mr. Hardie on many points. I believe he 
 exaggerated the number out of work. I do not 
 believe in building cruisers in order to find work 
 for unemployed labourers and navvies, or for 
 engineers and shipwrights, even if I had a shipyard 
 in my constituency. Further, as a Socialist, I am, 
 as I have ever been, against labour colonies, muni- 
 cipal workshops, and such economic nostrums as 
 find favour with the fledgling economists of the 
 S.D.F. and the embryonic statesmen of the Inde- 
 pendent Labour Party. 
 
 "6. I have not attacked the Home Secretary 
 over Featherstone, 
 
 " I did refuse to condemn until I had read 
 the evidence, and then I found that, although Mr. 
 Asquith 'accepted the responsibility,' the local 
 authorities and the magistrates were really to 
 blame. In this I differed from others who had 
 denounced Mr. Asquith outside, but were not 
 present either to attack or apologise when the 
 report upon the matter was before the House. I 
 was in my place, and said that if men riot they 
 must take the consequences, and not expect the 
 
i88 JOHN BURNS 
 
 amenities of the law plus the benefits of revolu- 
 tionary actions. Of course, Mr. Hyndman is an 
 authority upon this subject, as he knows, from 
 a distance, a great deal of riots. When, through 
 Socialist agitation, they have occurred in London, 
 as at Trafalgar Square, Dod Street, or World's 
 End, he has had a pressing engagement elsewhere. 
 
 " 7. Supporting Mr. Willis at the L.C.C. election 
 as against Mr. H. B. Rogers. 
 
 " I supported Mr. Willis because he was demo- 
 cratically chosen, and the Battersea electors justified 
 the support I gave him by giving to him a decisive 
 majority over the other three candidates, mainly 
 because his ability and his record of work on 
 behalf of labour on the bodies of which he had 
 been a member were superior to those of his 
 opponents. Until Mr. Rogers, who has lately 
 been defeated again in his candidature for the 
 local Board of Guardians, shows better qualifica- 
 tions for public office than he has done hitherto, 
 I will pursue the same course. I am not going to 
 support men for public office who qualify for a 
 seat on the London School Board, as Mr. Rogers 
 did, by being fined for not sending his children to 
 school and thus bringing himself and the local 
 labour movement into ridicule and contempt. 
 Mr. Hyndman will grumble at me for refusing to 
 nominate as a magistrate a ' comrade ' of the S.D.F., 
 whom I insisted should be compelled to leave 
 the Dock Strike, and who — before and since — has 
 several times been convicted of criminal offences. 
 
 "8. The statement that I accused the S.D.F. 
 of accepting pecuniary aid from the Tories is a 
 deliberate untruth. 
 
 " I did accuse certain persons — and I was not 
 referring to the S.D.F. when I said it, but to 
 certain men of the Independent Labour Party — 
 that, in threatening to run a candidate against me 
 
BURNS ON HIS DEFENCE 189 
 
 {vide Tory evening paper) they were in collusion 
 with the local Tories, whose only hope is that such 
 will be done. The cap fitted another head, how- 
 ever, and the speeches at the New Year's meeting 
 of the S.D.F. showed that the desire and threat 
 'to drive me from the House of Commons,' as Mr. 
 Quelch put it, is shared with some of the Inde- 
 pendent Labour Party with the S.D.F. The 
 statement that at Battersea I threatened to oppose 
 Mr. Hyndman at Burnley and Mr. Lansbury at 
 Walworth is entirely another invention of Mr. 
 Hyndman. Mr. Hyndman's shallow bluster, with- 
 out opposition from any one, will lose him any 
 chance he may have of polling 1000 votes. His 
 attack on me and others has reduced it already. 
 As for Mr. Lansbury at Walworth, he will want all 
 the help he can get to wipe out the heritage of 
 melancholy failure that Mr. Quelch left behind him 
 in that district. 
 
 " Mr. Hyndman winds up with a general screech, 
 calling me a bitter enemy of the S.D.F. This is 
 not so. That body has but one enemy, and he 
 exists in the person of Mr. Hyndman. He is the 
 fool furious who would rather lead in the hell of 
 his own failures than co-operate with others in the 
 heaven of the people's success. He it is who ten 
 years ago, and since, suspected everybody but him- 
 self, and who to-day, as a result, has not got 
 working with him many of the men and women 
 who, in spite of egotistical attacks, are making 
 Socialism a force in England. These people 
 intend, in spite of him and his small crowd of 
 precocious youths and immature men, to also make 
 it a Parliamentary force. 
 
 "In future, I intend in my work for labour to 
 ignore the man who, in the dock in April 1886, 
 acted like a craven ; who, in 1887, ran from Trafal- 
 gar Square like a beaten cur ; and on all occasions 
 
igo JOHN BURNS 
 
 has fallen short of the great movement that de- 
 mands better qualifications than he displays. Mr. 
 Hyndman, who to-day bullies Bebel and libels 
 Liebnecht, the trusted leaders of two millions of 
 German workmen, who dictates to Battersea, the 
 advance guard of the saner Socialist school, must 
 be told that the Socialist movement of to-day is not 
 what it was ten years ago. Then we had to attract 
 attention. Now the men whom Mr. Hyndman 
 attacks have to be responsible for guiding society, 
 with all its ramifications, through its transition 
 stage. Mr. Hyndman shirks the responsibility for 
 this critical work. I, with others, do not, and in 
 the work that presses on us we will not be in- 
 fluenced by the shrieking of the physical, mental, 
 and moral cretins of the S.D.F. Win or lose, we 
 intend to pursue the policy we inaugurated on the 
 London County Council, and are continuing in 
 the House of Commons, and for this there is but 
 one stimulus required, the hatred of the corrupt, 
 criminal and disappointed men. This I have 
 secured. For the sake of labour I can bear it, 
 and for the promotion of labour's best and purest 
 interests I am going on with my task. That is, the 
 municipal and legislative expression of rational, 
 disciplined, sober Social Democracy. For this I 
 will work, uninfluenced by slander, neither de- 
 pressed by misfortune nor intoxicated by success." 
 How far, and in what spirit. Burns carried out 
 his resolve, it is now my duty to show. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 BURNS'S DENUNCIATION OF THE I.L.P. — HIS "CHOICE 
 DERANGEMENT OF EPITAPHS" 
 
 It would be easy to pick holes in most of the 
 statements Burns made in his reply to Hyndman. 
 One instance, however, must suffice. 
 
 I deal with this instance because it shows how 
 inconsistent Burns was in not supporting Hardie 
 on the Unemployed question. He justified his 
 hostile treatment of Hardie by saying, "as a 
 Socialist, I am, as I have ever been, against labour 
 colonies, municipal workshops." 
 
 Now this is simply not true. In the speech 
 Burns delivered in the Washington Music Hall, 
 Battersea, on September 20th, 1890, reporting on 
 the Liverpool Trades Union Congress, Burns 
 said : — 
 
 " A resolution in favour of the municipal organi- 
 sation of unskilled workers in times of distress and 
 bad trade was also passed. In a word, we asked 
 the State and the Municipality to keep pace with 
 the displacement of labour that is going on by the 
 introduction of labour-saving machinery. There 
 are hundreds and thousands of men who, usually 
 of a proud and independent disposition, are in bad 
 times compelled either to beg, borrow, or steal, or 
 what is worse than either, perhaps go to prison or 
 workhouse. We say that State and Municipalities, 
 failing reduced hours all round, which I infinitely 
 prefer to relief works of any kind, should have 
 
192 JOHN BURNS 
 
 municipal workshops for these men who are out 
 of work, which would result beneficially to the 
 community from an £ s. d. point of view, and 
 will result in the moral, physical, and intellectual 
 improvement of the men, and act as a great pre- 
 ventative to that state of degradation into which 
 they would otherwise fall." 
 
 Here we have the Municipal Workshop speci- 
 fically advocated, and, generally, it may be said, 
 that the suggestions Hardie made for dealing with 
 the unemployed, and which Burns referred to as 
 the " economic nostrums of the embryonic states- 
 men of the Independent Labour Party," were 
 exactly on the lines Burns had advocated when he, 
 in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park, was champion- 
 ing the cause of the unemployed. So much it is 
 necessary to say here in view of the action Burns 
 took in 1895, when Hardie's persistence, notwith- 
 standing the assiduity with which Burns "lobbied" 
 against the concession, at length compelled the 
 Government to appoint a Select Committee to inquire 
 into Distress caused through Lack of Employment. 
 
 It would take too long to elaborate the indictment 
 that could be drawn up against Burns from an 
 analysis of the Blue Book containing the report of 
 that Select Committee. Suffice it to say that on 
 every page there is ample evidence of the sleuth- 
 hound persistence with which Burns hung on to 
 Hardie's trail. Both Burns and Hardie were mem- 
 bers of the Select Committee, Burns sitting at the 
 right hand of Campbell-Bannerman, the chairman, 
 and acting all through as counsel in defence of the 
 status quo. He cross-examined Hardie's witnesses, 
 ridiculed Hardie's proposals, and did his utmost to 
 spike Hardie's guns. 
 
 The Select Committee came to an untimely end 
 through the defeat of the Rosebery Government 
 in June 1895. At the General Election ensuing 
 
DENUNCIATION OF THE I.L.P. 193 
 
 Burns was re-elected for Battersea, and immediately 
 proceeded to execute an indecent war dance in 
 celebration of the disasters that had befallen Keir 
 Hardie and the candidates of the Independent 
 Labour Party and S.D.F. 
 
 The General Election of 1895 witnessed not only 
 a Liberal defeat ; the only Independent Labour 
 Member of Parliament, Keir Hardie, lost his seat for 
 South-West Ham. 
 
 In addition, every I.L.P. candidate for Parlia- 
 ment, numbering twenty-eight, including Hardie, was 
 defeated. All the S.D.F, candidates, five in number, 
 likewise figured at the bottom of the poll. 
 
 On August 4th, 1895, Burns delivered a speech in 
 Battersea Park in which he made merry over the 
 misfortunes of the I.L.P. and S.D.F. 
 
 Referring to George Lansbury's S.D.F. candi- 
 dature for Walworth, he said : — 
 
 " After fourteen years' work in a city of 500,000 
 voters they can only poll 203 votes. This is an 
 impotent and ridiculous display." 
 
 Of the I.L.P. Burns said :— 
 
 "The I.L.P. is burst, and only a small remnant 
 remains. Its tactics are those of howling dei-vishes, 
 and its leaders are now in the desert of defeat. Its 
 progress has been politically checked by their rout 
 at this election." 
 
 Burns proceeded to pile epithets on the heads of 
 the Socialist leaders. As showing the extent of his 
 vocabulary of abuse, I cull the following specimens 
 from this Battersea speech : — 
 
 " Erotic pamphleteers and journalists" ; " howling 
 dervishes"; "Tory bonnets"; "Cranks and fad- 
 dists " ; " disappointed revolutionaries ■" ; " impostors 
 and adventurers " ; " needy political knife-grinders " ; 
 " empty charlatans " ; " unscrupulous demagogues " ; 
 "universal failures " ; "vain cowards" ; " wreckers " ; 
 " fanatical fools " ; " political pantaloons." 
 
 N 
 
194 JOHN BURNS 
 
 In addition, " their policy was one of screeches 
 and spasms." 
 
 Of the S.D.F. Burns spoke as follows : — 
 
 " Every movement must have its dustbin — the 
 S.D.F. fills that position efficiently. It is the 
 dumping ground of all the cranks, faddists, fanatics, 
 and disappointed revolutionaries. They are fac- 
 tious, fanatical, intolerant, supicious, and ignorantly 
 impracticable. It is urged that I belonged to them 
 once. That is true, with others that have left. I 
 provided them with brains and capacity — they 
 have shown neither since our departure." 
 
 Having thus pronounced the "epitaphs" of all the 
 existing Socialist leaders and parties. Burns went 
 on to suggest that a New Party with a new policy 
 might arise. 
 
 " From these," he said, " must be re-created 
 another party, another movement, perhaps another 
 organisation, more patient, less hysterical, more 
 business-like. 
 
 " The Unemployed have better friends who intend 
 by less showy methods to do all that is possible, as 
 hitherto, to palliate and remedy their condition. 
 
 " I am sorry to think there is no prospect yet 
 of the formation of a Socialist Party in England. 
 What will prevent it ? The Socialists. So anxious 
 are they to reach the millenium that they sacrifice 
 each other on the road." 
 
 This precious passage of a speech in which he 
 had been scarifying and sacrificing Socialist leaders 
 wholesale, was immediately followed by a declara- 
 tion of a further intention to " sacrifice." 
 
 " Nothing can be done, however," he continued, 
 "until the erotic school of pamphleteers and jour- 
 nalists who dominate the policy of the I.L.P. are 
 relegated to their proper place." 
 
 As, though from 1895 to 1900 Burns had the 
 Parliamentary platform all to himself, nothing was 
 
DENUNCIATION OF THE I.L.P. 195 
 
 done to relegate "to their proper places" those 
 whom Burns by implication denounced, he seems 
 to have determined to qualify for office whenever 
 the Liberals returned to power. 
 
 It would be wearisome to justify that general 
 statement by chapter and verse, so I will let it stand 
 as justified by the event. 
 
 But it was not so much his own merit as the 
 necessity to do something to stop the landslide of 
 working men to the ranks of the Labour Party as 
 formed in 1900 that made Burns's market. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 JACK IN OFFICE 
 
 In his elevation to Cabinet rank, as in every stage 
 of his career, Burns profited by the labours of other 
 people. Had there been no Independent Labour 
 movement winning away the allegiance of the trade 
 unionists from the Liberal Party, the desperate 
 expedient of including a working man in a Capital- 
 istic Cabinet would never have been resorted to. 
 Burns's promotion was directly due to the urgent 
 necessity to administer some kind of check to the 
 increasing popularity of the Labour Party. 
 
 Burns himself knew that this was the impelling 
 motive. The story told about what happened when 
 he was " sent for " by Campbell-Bannerman proves 
 it. It was Campbell-Bannerman who himself re- 
 lated the incident. 
 
 " I sent for Mr. Burns," he is reported to have 
 said, " and informed him that I would like him 
 to accept the Presidency of the Local Government 
 Board, with a seat in the Cabinet. Naturally, I 
 expected him to be somewhat overpowered by the 
 announcement. But, to my surprise, he seemed 
 to think that the obligation was on my side. 
 
 " ' Bravo, Sir Henry,' he said, slapping me on the 
 back, ' bravo ! That is the most popular thing you 
 have yet done.' " 
 
 Burns undoubtedly knew what use the Liberals 
 
 would make of his promotion to Cabinet rank. It 
 
 was the one card that they were able to play to 
 
 X96 
 
BURNS IN COURT DRESS 
 (From Jolui Bull) 
 
JACK IN OFFICE 197 
 
 deter working men en masse deserting the Liberal 
 Party for the I Labour Party, and they used that 
 card, and Burns himself used it, to trump the 
 Labour lead. 
 
 In lending himself to this expedient Burns 
 proved false to all his previous professions. In 
 1893, an interview with Burns, written by Raymond 
 Blaythwayt, appeared in the January issue of the 
 Idler. In that interview Burns is represented as 
 saying — 
 
 " I have not the slightest desire for office. It is 
 for me to give hostages to disinterestedness. My 
 only way is by teaching and preaching, and con- 
 vincing the people that the hunting for the loaves 
 which one denounces in other people has no charm 
 for oneself. I would sooner be plain ' John Burns ' 
 than the Rt. Hon. John Burns, Premier of England. 
 The fishes of office often stink. I don't want office 
 nor money either. 
 
 " Office ! " he cried with fine scorn, " I am prouder 
 of my present office — Judge-Advocate of the poor 
 — than I should be of the premiership itself. The 
 conviction is born in them that I am after neither 
 office nor money, and they trust me." 
 
 That was Burns in 1893. In 1894 he was still of 
 the same mind. In June, 1894, the Lobby corre- 
 spondent of the Times wrote : — 
 
 "When the Ministry was in process of recon- 
 struction owing to the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, 
 Mr. Burns was approached with a view to his 
 acceptance of an official position. Although the 
 offer was a tempting one — the appointment to 
 which the hon. gentleman had the refusal carrying 
 with it a substantial salary — the member for Batter- 
 sea did not see his way to accept it. In the further 
 shuffling of cards necessitated by Mr. Mundella's 
 resignation of the Presidency of the Board of Trade, 
 Mr. Burns is said to have again been invited to 
 
198 JOHN BURNS 
 
 join the Government with the same result, his 
 contention being that he can best serve the interests 
 of the working classes by maintaining an inde- 
 pendent attitude." 
 
 In 1894, it will be seen, Mr. Burns condemned by 
 anticipation his later action when he became Presi- 
 dent of the Local Government Board. " He could," 
 he believed, " best serve the interests of the working 
 classes by maintaining an independent attitude." 
 
 But what had happened between 1894 and 1905 
 to cause him to change his mind ? Was there any 
 less need for Labour members to maintain an inde- 
 pendent attitude ? The answer is obvious. The 
 change had occurred in Mr. Burns himself. From 
 being a Labour member he had developed into an 
 official Liberal. 
 
 He had lost touch with the modern Labour 
 movement. Although, from 1895 to 1900 he was 
 not irritated by the Parliamentary rivalry of Keir 
 Hardie, he was chagrined to discover that Hardie, 
 during those dark years, was becoming, day by day, 
 a greater force out of doors. During those five 
 years the despised LL.P., under Hardie's leadership, 
 was laying the foundations on which the National 
 Trade Union Labour Party was built in 1900. 
 Hardie, in that year, re-entered the House of 
 Commons, and was the first of the Labour M.P.'s 
 to be paid a salary out of the funds of the Labour 
 Party. During the 1900-5 Parliament, Hardie 
 was joined by Crooks, Shackleton, and Henderson, 
 who formed the advance guard of the thirty Inde- 
 pendent Labour Members returned in 1906, and 
 the first act of the new Labour Party in the 1906 
 Parliament was to unanimously elect Hardie as 
 their chairman and Parliamentary leader. 
 
 Burns knew, when he accepted office in Decem- 
 ber, 1905, that the Labour Party was coming into 
 the next Parliament in strong force. Burns knew 
 
JACK IN OFFICE 199 
 
 that Hardie would be acclaimed its Leader, and he 
 ranged himself in opposition to that Labour Party, 
 and accepted the Consolation Prize — for he would 
 much rather have been the leader of the Labour 
 Party — of the Presidency of the Local Government 
 Board. 
 
 That, anyway, is my reading of the situation. I 
 do not believe Burns was personally influenced by 
 the inducement of salary. If the thought of ;£20oo 
 a year, increased to ;^5ooo in 1910, weighed with 
 him at all, it would be more on account of his 
 wife and son — the son born to him after fourteen 
 years of Malthusian married life, the son who had 
 not arrived when Burns talked about giving hostages 
 to disinterestedness. 
 
 Anyhow, Burns accepted office, and the com- 
 plaint I have to make about that is not so much 
 that he did so, as that he immediately, from the 
 Treasury Bench, began to slander the unemployed. 
 
 " On my promotion to office," he said, " I had 
 the honour of going with my colleagues to Buck- 
 ingham Palace. In my Court dress I afterwards 
 took my place at one o'clock in the morning in 
 the long queue of three hundred or four hundred 
 men who assemble nightly on the Thames Em- 
 bankment. 
 
 " I mixed with those men for two or three 
 hours, and I am glad to say that they did not 
 recognise me as one who had come fresh from the 
 Palace of His Majesty. 
 
 " I turned up the collar of my coat, pulled my 
 'bowler' over my eyes, and looked as miserable 
 as I could, and at the end of this long queue I, 
 a Minister in receipt of ;£'200O a year, held out my 
 hand and received my portion of soup and my 
 pound of bread." 
 
 Burns made that statement in the House of 
 Commons, and it was reported in all the papers. 
 
200 JOHN BURNS 
 
 but there were those who cast doubts on the 
 literal truthfulness of the narrative. 
 
 Will Crooks, the Labour member for Woolwich, 
 for instance, speaking at the Bow Palace imme- 
 diately afterwards, said he wondered, if it ever 
 came to his lot to wear Court dress, whether he 
 would walk down the Embankment in knee- 
 breeches, with garters and low shoes with silver 
 buckles, wearing a sword and a velvet coat, and 
 whether he would be able to put a big overcoat 
 over his dress and get a basin of soup. He did 
 not think it possible to do such a thing. 
 
 But, whether it were possible or not. Burns did 
 say he had done it. And when he related the 
 motive with which it was done, it will be easier to 
 understand the disgust Burns's behaviour in ofiBce 
 speedily induced in the breasts of the members of 
 the Labour Party, even of those who were anxious 
 that he should have fair trial. 
 
 The debate, as I have said, was on unemploy- 
 ment, the subject on which Burns had been so 
 eloquent in the 'Eighties. But his argument now 
 was that the unemployed man was merely a loafer. 
 
 "What," he asked, " was the kind of day's history 
 in the life of such a man in search of a day's work ? 
 Between nine and ten in the morning he went to 
 Birdcage Walk and listened to the Army Band. 
 After this he walked across the Park to Soho or 
 Piccadilly and got his luncheon at some one's ex- 
 pense at a cheap restaurant. 'What shall we do 
 next ? ' was the question of one companion to 
 another. 'Oh, let us walk across the Park and 
 see old Burns go to the levee.' 
 
 " At five o'clock came tea at a cabman's shelter ; 
 at ten o'clock there was not money enough for 
 a lodging, but the night being fine this man and 
 his companion elected to go to the Embankment 
 and get soup and shelter. 
 
JACK IN OFFICE 201 
 
 "Was that," he asked, "a- discriminating kind 
 of charity ? When a man knew that this sort of 
 thing took place, what kind of incentive was being 
 held out to any sturdy vagrant getting probably 
 6d., 8d., or gd. a day from certain sources, with 
 a too indulgent wife or mother, which should pre- 
 vent him coming up to London and swelling the 
 ranks of the unemployed." 
 
 Burns, it will be seen, had already, within 
 twenty-four hours of accepting office, forgotten 
 his own words on the unemployment problem, 
 when he said : — 
 
 " They lie in their teeth when they tell you that 
 unemployment is caused by drink. Here I stand, 
 a skilled artisan, teetotaller, vegetarian, non-smoker, 
 and Malthusian. I have not tasted food for twenty- 
 four hours, I have been out of work for four 
 months. There stands my wife. She is turning 
 the ribbons of her bonnet to make it look more 
 respectable. That is my position, a skilled artisan. 
 What then must be the position of those who have 
 not skilled trades, and have a family to support ? " 
 
 Here, for the moment, I leave John Burns. I 
 have traced his career from the period described 
 in the above words to the time when he donned 
 Court dress for the first time, and improved the 
 occasion by masquerading in it on the Thames 
 Embankment, 
 
 We have seen him rise into a Right Honourable ; 
 his subsequent progress still remains to be told. 
 In that connection I shall have to deal with a more 
 complex theme, and attempt to sTiow how the 
 influences which triumphed over John Burns were 
 brought unsuccessfully to bear upon the Labour 
 Party itself. 
 
 THE END 
 
Printed by Ballanttne, Hanson ^ Co. 
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