Mr. Lansbury
Looking Backwards and Forwaris. By George Le,nsbury. (Biackie. Se. 6d.)
IT is a simple fact that the position of George Lansbury. is unique. If one were asked to name the most representative man of Greater London, the difficulty would be to find another to put beside him. He has been in public life for almost sixty years, has always been in the thick of the fight, and yet is the friend of all. There is no Englishman of his generation who has stood ' so unchallengeably above calumny. His honesty and disinterestedness are axiomatic. The dirt of politics does not touch him ; meanness does not.come near him ; he is a stranger to bitterness. EverybOdy knows that he will end as he began—a simple, joyous, generous, and large-hearted son of the people. He hai already published an autobiography, but this new book implies that 'his life of varied experience and continuous incident might yield half a dozen more volumes of reminiscence equally full of human and social interest. He writes without effort and is seldom trivial.
For nearly seventy years Mr. LansburY has been a denizen of East London, although many readers will be surprised to learn that he is Suffolk-born. Whitehapel and Poplar as he knew them in his youth were part of an. unmitigated slum desert. Mr. Lansbury's memories, hOwever, will not allow him to say that their people were less happy in the 70's and 80's than they are today. ' Their amusements were meagre and crude. The poverty and' barbarism were hideous : the East End was an utterly derelict region. The people had heard of Lord Shaftesbury : " He was a good man, and very very high up." Mr. Lansbury is sure that no one woman or girl could be found today M. a condition of wretchedness such as that displayed by 'the matehworkers who walked to Westminster to protest against Robert Lowe's tax on matches. The earn- ings of an adult ran between 17s. and 25s. ; 80s. a week was prosperity. The modern remedial social agencies were not yet within sight. The Church, except for a small number of devoted men, was dead. But all decent Londoners were sternly sabbatarian : " My friends and I," says Mr. Lansbury, " always swore by Sunday.". - He describes how the preachers and publicans were allied to prevent any relaxation of Sunday observance ; and he is sure that the Church today would be in a far stronger position with- the people if its ministers had had the sense to encourage the people to attend service in the morning and devote the rest . of the day to recreation. Mr. Lansbury has witnessed all the changes in the community. 'Until after 1870 East London- was- virtually. all English. The Jews began to pour in after the great Russian massacres of fifty years no. Mr. Lansbury has no patience with those who hold that East London was ruined by the alien. On the contrary, he affirms, it was pulled out of its sink of misery mainly by foreigners.
He was made a trade-unionist by the great dock strike of 1889, and soon afterwards he left the Liberals, having reached Iris present faith, that in Socialism lies the only hope of an equitable and peaceful world. He was a pioneer organiser of demonstrations by East-Londoners in the West End. He led the first women's suffrage procession. He has served two ten as in prison : one as a suffragist, being at once released by means of the hunger-strike ; the other in 1920, along with his colleagues of the Poplar Board of Guardians. He remains, impenitent on the issue of Poplarism. Its purpose, he says,• was to transfer the burden of poor relief from the misery boroughs to London as a whole ; and this purpose was fulfilled, through the imprisonment of the Guardians at Brixton.
Ile controlled the Daily Herald for a dozen years. The oddest thing in these reminiscences is his revelation of the, fact that in 1912 he wanted Frank Harris to take over the editorship, and that Harris said he was willing, if the owners would allow him to run the paper on the pure teachings of Christ !
Mr. Lansbury has fought elections with gusto, and has got much more enjoyment out of the Commons than would have been expected by those who know him only as an agitator. Parliament, he says, has grown vastly in efficiency. As a man with a natural gift of speech he has always been interested in oratory. He was under the spell of Mr. Gladstone, though ' he could not understand his denseness concerning Labour. Balfour seemed to him by far the greatest parliamentarian of the age. Of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald he says, rather acutely, " he always spoke as though he had something else in his mind, which he thought it unwise to reveal." Of the great London, event of 1926 he remarks that few of the leaders who con- sented to the'general strike had any realisation of the fact that such a strike if successful must mean revolution. His faith in the common people is invincible ; and so thorough an English- man is he that he is convinced " this great people will once again lead the world," and next time along the path of peace.,
He writes easily and with charm, but is alWays careless. He thanks his daughter and Mr. Raymond PoStgate for reading , his proofs. They should at least have corrected the elder's slips in grammar and his spelling of familiar proper names ; told him the meaning of " cockney saturnalia," and expunged a sentence such as this : " My mother died when my first child was born." That would seem to imply a new peril in
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