TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE RIGHT OF THE COMMUNITY TO EXIST
IT was when an attempt was being made hi France some years ago to hold Up the food supplies of the nation .by paralysing • the railways that M. Briand 'uttered the words Whieh we Use as the title of this article. -" By • what right," - he was asked angrily by one- of the strike leaders, "do you eall up conscripts to return to their Old jobs on the railways and break the strike ? " M. Brian(' replied : "The right of the community to exist." This right of the community, which comprehends all classes, to have their interests preferred to the interests of any one class is implicit in the issue which is being disputed this week in the Labour Party Conference at Liverpool. Philosophic minds may ask us to define the word " right " and &intend that We are referring to nothing but the instinct Of self-preservation. Perhaps we are ; but we think it is not going too far to call that a right which has been established-by custom and by law and which is, moreover, the basis of democracy. Democracy means the right of the majority to decide. If the majority are not allowed to decide how they wish to be treated and how they ought to be treated, democracy lapses. - The future for good or ill Of this country does not depend - Upon What happens at Liverpool this Week, but -We do say that the decisions taken" there will be a very important milestone in the march towards a decision on the question how this country is to be ruled. Mr. Cramp, who delivered the Presidential address to the Conference on Tuesday, said that the most important point to be determined was whether the Labour Party was or was not a Constitutional Party engaged in winning public support for a programme of :social- and economic reforms to be carried through by ordinary Parliamentary means. The case could not be stated more compre- hensively. For generations the leaders of the wage- earners never doubted that they would be able to get what they wanted when they obtained universal suffrage. They saw that if an enfranchised Mass of manual workers all agreed, they would have a majority and they could pass any legislation they pleased. • They never, therefore, let their eyes wander from Parliament. Parliament was the Mecca of their hopes. Why is it that now, when for all practical purposes universal suffrage exists, many representatives of Labour ardently desire to throw away the great prize which they have won after so long and arduous a struggle ? There is only one answer. They are disillusioned and angry because they have not been able to persuade enough of their friends to rally to them and make a majority. There is a story of a . traveller at an inn who complained that there were so Many fleas in his bed that they could have pulled him on to the floor if only they had combined. .
If only they had combined ! If only enough people of one way of political thinking, Socialists, Communists or Anarchists, combined to get a Parliamentary majority, the rest of us would have to submit. All we could do would be to try with all our energy to persuade the voters that they had committed an egregious folly and we should have every hope of remedying. the ghastly mistake . at the next election. No party has a better weapon than persuasion ; and all parties have an equal right to use it given to them by- the Constitution.
, Now,- because they have been disappointed, perhaps - owing to their. poWers of --persuasion being too slight,- the members of the Minority .Movement have lost patience. They want to jettison democracy, to throw over the right of the majority to decide. They want to short-circuit Parliament, form a United Front of Trade 'Unions, and use the General Council of the Trade Union Congress as a Junta. Parliament would be graciously allowed to continue its existence but it would be docked of its supreme -powers, and the Cabinet Ministers of every Proletariat Government would be appointed, not by the Prime Minister, but-by the-General Council of the Trade Union Congress. There is no question here of respecting or caring for any class outside -what is called the...Proletariat: A tyranny would be set up under a new name. After Englishmen have over- come one -kind of oppression after another, feudal lords; kings, cardinals, Protectors and the oligarchies of ruling families, are they to put back the hands of the clock and accept the latest kind of class domination invented in Russia ?
Of course, we do not believe anything of the kind,: We should despair of our country if we did. We welcome the gallant resistance to a preposterous and pugnacious doctrine which has been offered by the more sober leaders at Liverpool. Let them not think that we welcome for-political reasons the split which has appeared in the ranks of Labour. We look upon the successful struggle of the moderates—courageous at last—as some- thing that was owing to England. We rejoice in the spectacle as Englishmen, not as politicians. - The right of the community, of all the various classes, to exist has been asserted in a particular way this week by the formation of the body calling itself O.M.S.- an Organization for the Maintenance of Supplies. We have so often pleaded for forethought in preparing means of resisting an attempt to hold- up the supplies of the community in order to force political decision that we shall not be accused of want of sympathy with the purpose of the O.M.S. Our criticism is that not -nearly enough care has been taken to protect the new organiza- tion from the obvious yet most damaging charge that it is a class organization. Its leaders are distinguished and highly respected men, but can it fairly be said that the organization represents all classes ? We fear that it cannot.- The personnel makes a present to the enemies of democracy of a new argument. We hope it may be possible yet to enlarge the management of- the O.M.S.- We could have no possible objection, -but. indeed every kind of commendation, for an organization which did not invent fantastic duties for itself, which drew upon all classes, and which humbly (as we admit the O.M.S. does) offered its services in an emergency to the legally established authorities.- There must be hundreds of thousands of-manual workers up and down the country who hate revolutionary methods and, who mean to see that their families are not starved if ever there is a hold up by means of a general strike, and who would gladly support such a body - as the O.M.S. if -its cause were differently presented. Are they represented on the executive ? The -announcements in the newspapers do not lead us to suppos- that they are. -
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