January 1911

Editorial: Another “ Lost Leader”

Mr. D. J. Shackleton, late “Labour” M.P., upholder of the black legging labour exchanges, apologist in general for the Liberal party, has at length received due reward for services rendered. The devil looks after his own. The capitalist Liberal Government, in elevating Mr. Shackleton to the position of Labour adviser to the Home Office, has again emphasised the fact, so often retailed by us, of its willingness to buy any material (however soiled) that it has found in the past, and expects to find in the future, useful in its struggle against the rising force of Socialism.

The Decline of Patriotism

Our capitalist masters are apparently anxious about a matter of first importance to their country. For ages they have been able to rely upon the working class to take up arms in defence of their exploiters’ property; now, however, according to Lord Esher, an eminent authority, things are changing. “Under our present system,” he says in a recent article in the National Review, “we purchase annually for the Regular Army, in peace, the bones and muscles and youth of about 30,000 of our countrymen. We keep them a few years, then we throw them away and take in a fresh supply.”

“ We,” of course, means the capitalist class. The working class is represented by the bone and muscle which is purchased. It is evidently as bad a case for the workers on the military field as on the industrial. When they are no longer of any value they are cast aside like a sucked orange.