CORRESPONDENCE.
AN AUSTRALIAN VIEW OF BRITISH POLITICS.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR." j Sra,--.-We, in Australia, watch the political drift in Great Britain with the keenest interest, born not merely of community of race and speech, but of experience. For though it is not usually recognised, yet we in Australia have wrestled with the same problems which are perplexing England, and, if we have not solved them, at least we have proved that some solutions, which you, in the Motherland, are being urged in stentorian tones to adopt, are impossible. We see the fight in England, too, as Englishmen cannot see it, because we see it in perspective—the perspective, say, of 12,000 miles. And the perspective of distance has something of the effect of perspective in time. The 12,000 miles of sea- space across which we look enables us, in some measure at least, to see forces and events as the next generation of Englishmen will see them.
As the Australian listens to the strenuous contentions of British politicians and journalists, it is clear to him, for example, that nobody in English public life quite understands how much geography counts in politics. It is constantly argued, for example, that as the mother-country has granted self-rule to the great provinces of the Empire, she ought to grant it to Ireland. This was Mr. Gladstone's argument. In the speech which introduced his famous Bill, he said he only proposed "to give to Irishmen in Ireland what had already been given to Frenchmen in Canada, to Dutchmen at the Cape, and to the descendants of the convicts in Tasmania" —a bit of characteristic Gladstonese. It is true that the great provinces of the Empire enjoy the freedom of indepen- dent States without their risks, and nowhere else in history can be found such an example of magnanimous policy on the part of a motherland to her distant children. Great Britain lost America because she insisted on the right to tax her provinces. But we in Australia are left to frame our own tariff, and we cheerfully put an enormous tax on every case of British goods that comes into our ports. Why should not the policy which succeeds in the case of Australia succeed equally with Ireland P
The answer is to be found written in terms of geography. The 12,000 miles of sea betwixt Australia and the Motherland count for more than the tiny thread of St. George's Channel which parts Ireland from Great Britain. It is only 64 miles from Dublin to Holyhead; only 138 miles from Dublin to Liverpool. If Melbourne or Sydney were parted from Great Britain by a distance so minute, it is not enough to say that we should not dream of an independent Parliament, and a separate tariff ; we would not accept them ! We would not tolerate them. Put Ireland where Australia is, and Home Rule would be natural. Put Australia where Ireland is, and for Australians political separation would not be only impossible, it would be felt to be a degradation. Ten years ago we, in Australia, were a cluster of separate States, hedged off from each other by tariff walls, and without a common scheme of defence. These conditions were found to be intolerable. They imperilled our ownership of the continent, since they made a common scheme of defence impossible. Australia resembled a human body without a single thinking brain, or a common nerve-centre, each limb moving independently of every other limb. Fremantle is 2,430 miles distant from Sydney; but, as Australians judge, it would be a menace to the safety and welfare of all Australia to permit it to stand apart. The entire continent, with its vast spaces, must have a single tariff, a common scheme of defence, and separate State government only so far as it does not destroy political unity. And if Australia would not allow separate government to States parted from each other by thousands of miles, how absurd, on Australian logic, it would be not to hold under the authority of one Parliament, and within the zone of one tariff and of one defence scheme, the islands which are the very citadel of the Empire, and are separated from each other by less than a hundred miles !
We find, again, that geographical space profoundly in- fluences our politics, and in quite unexpected ways. It changes the type of our politicians. It practically makes public life impossible to whole classes who, by ability, education, and familiarity with affairs are specially fitted to serve the State. We have no leisured class in Australia, men with inherited fortunes, who take to politics naturally as a career. And a lawyer, say, with a busy practice in Sydney, a merchant with a big business in Brisbane or Perth, a wool-grower on the Darling finds it impossible to sit in a Parliament which meets in Mel- bourne and sits for, say, eleven months out of twelve. When the Federal Parliament is transferred to a bush capital, created ad hoc, the situation will be still worse ; and professional or business men in any of the great cities will practically cease to take any part in the business of governing Australia. Mere geographical distance will make it impossible. As a result we are evolving a type of professional politician, small men who have no business or professional interests, and to whom the salary of £600 a year with free railway passes and chances of a portfolio are a sufficient inspiration.
In another way geographical space affects our politics• Our Federal Senate is elected on the amain de bide principle. Each State is a separate constituency, a constituency perhaps as large as Germany and France put together. The effect of this is to kill out the independent candidate. No single figure is visible, no one voice is audible over an area so vast. The party ticket is everything, the individual nothing. And as we have in Australia only one coherent, disciplined, enthusiastic organisation—the Labour Party—the geographical conditions of the problem tell enormously in its favour. Now if the difficulties of space count for so much with a Parliament which has the task of governing a continent, how enormously these difficulties would be multiplied if there should ever emerge the astonishing figure of a Federal Parliament for the Empire : a Parliament to legislate for one fifth of the surface of the planet, and nearly one third of the human race ! Australian experience supplies overwhelming arguments against the very idea of such a Parliament.
Great Britain again will be wise to look at the drift of in. dustrial politics in the perspective of Australian experience. In this field we are, as far as experience goes, say half a cen- tury in advance of the Motherland ; and we can watch the industrial disquiet which perplexes British politics and British politicians with half-amused, half-rueful interest. We have gone through it; we know what are its issues. The central, all- significant fact in Australian politics to-day is the awakening of what may be called class consciousness in the whole body of workers. Theyare fused into unity for political ends. They realise that it is within their power to capture the whole machinery of legislation, and to use it to serve class interests. As a result, political opinion amongst us is stratified on an entirely new plan. General theories have disappeared. Free Trade and Protection count for nothing. Among the leaders of the Labour Party in Australia are able men who are convinced and declared Free Traders, others equally able and convinced are declared Protectionists. But political theories are of secondary importance : the party comes first. And the class feeling thus aroused has the fervonra of a religion. It is as intolerant as Indian castes. It may be said to have created a new ethical code. It is certainly destroying all the accepted and industrial ideals. A few years ago a good artisan's idea was to get better wages by doing better work. Superior skill brought larger pay. To-day the working man expects to get shorter hours and higher pay by Act of Parliament ; the worker who is quicker and more skilful than his fellow workman dare not use his skill. To work quicker than the man beside him is an act of treachery to his class. The impact of class feeling is practically irresistible. A man who does not march with his class, shout with it, vote with it, is looked upon as a pariah. He is branded a " scab ": he is not allowed to sleep under the same roof, eat at the same table, or play the same games with the Unionists. How arrogant organised labour can be is scarcely credible. In the carters' strike in Adelaide a few weeks ago the strikers practically took command of the city and forbade traffic, or granted it, at their pleasure. Supplies were allowed to be taken to the hospitals, but the carts had to carry the red flag. Permits were granted by the strikers in some cases, and one such permit lies before me now. It runs: "This man is allowed to get oil." It is signed by the secretary of the Strike Com- mittee, and stamped with the die of the Adelaide Carters' Union.
Intellectually, many of the political ideals of the unions are amazingly crude. They think that they can, by higher wages and shorter hours, increase the cost of producing an article without increasing its price to the consumer. They imagine, in other words, that they can persuade one half of a pair of scales to go up without the other half going down. They do not realise, too, that if a man as regards one article is a pro- ducer, as regards a hundred other articles he is a consumer, and they are perplexed to find that higher wages mean dearer articles. At Broken Hill the Bakers' Union agreed to strike if every master baker would not enter into a bond of twenty-five pounds not to sell bread under the standard price fixed by the combined meeting of the Operative Bakers and Bread Carters' Union. The men were striking, amazing to say, against cheap bread. They wanted the master bakers to charge higher prices that they might pay higher wages. Speaking generally, the working classes are disposed to expect the Parliaments to save them from high rents and high prices by fixing rents and prices by law, and when this proves to be impossible, then the demand will be that the State itself shall become producer.
It is easy to smile at the crudity of such political ideas, but no one can refuse a tribute of admiration to the energy, ardour, and method which the members of the Labour Party show in their politics. They are the one organised and perpetually active force in Australian politics. All the methods which usually compel men to work—the desire for fuller pockets, easier life, and social advancement—are, in their case, trans- ferred to the political realm and act as a driving force in poli- tical action. The party is a unit ; its platform is determined by a conference which sits in secret. That platform is final; it is as absolute and nearly as sacred as the Tables of Law which Moses brought from Mount Sinai. All the constituencies have fought on this platform in New South Wales and South Australia. The Federal Parliament has been captured, and there is a Labour Ministry in power. Behind the Ministry in each Parliament is the caucus of the Labour Members; in both Houses Ministers are but their spokesmen. Federal Australia has, in name, a double-chambered Parliament of the Drthodox type, but the true Parliament is the caucus which meets in one of the committee rooms. This is worse than a Parliament of a single chamber.
How fast the Labour Party has grown the figures show. In 4891 there were 36 Labour Members in the New South Wales Parliament, 4 in the Victorian Parliament, and none anywhere Else. To-day in the various Parliaments—State and Federal :—there are 229 Labour Members. Political power is sought with a skill and courage and persistency quite without pre- cedent. In every constituency for the Federal Parliament which has not a Labour representative, there is a Labour candidate already chosen, who goes to live in the constituency and will work for three years, holding meetings, organising committees, patiently securing lists, in readiness for the next election, which is three years off. Never before in Australia— ?perhaps never before in any part of the British Empire—was .the business of politics carried on with so much discipline, method, and thoroughness as by the Labour Party in Australia. The energy which used to flow in individual channels is now turned into the political stream, and the area of what is called ." Labour'! widens. The system of Wares Boards is being
applied to one industry after another—to domestic servants, to clerks, to grocers' assistants, to agricultural labourers, and all this helps to strengthen the sense that the State is a sort of Providence whose duty it is to take charge of all human activities and supply all human wants. The Australian Workers' Union—the workers in the great wool-growing industry—is perhaps the strongest single industrial organisa- tion in Australia. It is said to be represented by seventeen Members in the Federal Parliament. It levies a tax on all its members in support of its newspaper organ, and thus ensures that newspaper a subsidy of something like £6,000 a year.
All the forces and tendencies thus described point clearly in the direction of Socialism. Yet the present writer, at least, declines to believe that Australia will commit itself to that tremendous experiment. All the precedents of history are against it. No English-speaking community yet has tried to exist on a Socialistic basis. The Australian, too, is of Anglo- Saxon type and has the stubborn individualism of his race. Property is too widely and generously distributed to make tolerable a social order which would abolish private property. But Australia at the present moment does offer the spectacle of an absolutely new fact. Practically the entire working class is seized by the idea of attaining political power as a class. It is organised for that end, fused into unity, dis- possessed of general political ideas, conscious only of class ties and interests ; and it has the impulse and temper of victory. Some strange results must follow.
Now all this is full of instruction to England. The very same ideas are stirring, vaguely and dimly, in the blood of the working classes there. They create a ferment which perplexes the experts. The working classes resemble a chemical solution which is on the point of crystallisation ; and Australia supplies a hint of the form into which it will crystallise. Let us imagine an England with all its workers fused and disciplined on the Australian pattern, caring nothing about the old watchwords, indifferent to Free Trade and Protection, concerned only to capture Parliament and write its ideals in the Statute Book.—I am, Sir, &c.,
AN AUSTRALIAN.
Previous page
