Snapshots:
SNAP SHOTS.
Speaking at the Manchester Coal Exchange, the Rev. Conrad Noel said there were times when it would be perfectly right for Socialists to be Tariff Reformers. Socialism was an international movement anda tariff would be quite justifiable if a nation put up a barrier against the importation of sweated goods manufactured in another country.
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An international movement! And yet the producers in one part of the world are to “put up tariffs to protect themselves against the producers in another part. Try again, Mr. Noel.
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“I ask them (the Labour Party) where would they have been but for free trade, education, Chinese labour, etc. Many of them were elected by Radical enthusiasm, Liberal votes and trade union funds.”
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Thus spake John Burns at Leeds on December 9th. Does he fear the Labour members will prove ungrateful to their Liberal allies ?
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“The problem of Socialism is what to do with the unemployed rich.” That may be the problem from the Rev. Conrad Noel’s point of view, but as under Socialism there will be neither unemployed nor rich, all being employed and well-to-do, it is no problem for us.
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One more of Mr. Noel: “I think that possibly spending my time trying to urge stupid people to reorganise Society on a just foundation is productive work ; at any rate it is the very bedrock of the work of a priest of the Church of England.”
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The stupidity and cupidity of people are the parson’s opportunity, of which he takes full advantage.
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Politicians here, writes the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, are greatly interested in the prospect held out by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald of the union between the two Labour parties in Parliament. But not much alarm has been caused by the announcement.
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Why should there be any alarm ? One Labour party will be quite as harmless to the master class and quite as useless to the working class as two—or two hundred.
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As to the Labour Party, they had every reason to be proud of those who had been sent to Parliament. They had done their work loyally and fairly, and he did not regard the Labour members as by any means the most dangerous section in the House of Commons.—Colonel Kekton-Slaney, M.P., at Liverpool, Sept. 24th, 1907.
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Mr. W. Crooks, M.P., (who has signed the L.R.C. declaration), was present last month at a dinner at the National Liberal Club to mark the revival of “Progressive” activity in London affairs. Other Liberals present included Lord Carrington, Dr. Macnamara, etc.
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Messrs. T. Glover and W. T. Wilson, both L.R.C. M.P.’s, supported the National Liberal Federation at a meeting held on December 14th at the Memorial Hall, Manchester, to explain the provisions of the Small Holdings Act.
J.B.
(Socialist Standard, January 1908)