Act 1913; If the Trade Union Act (1913) Amendment Bill 1922 Passes,

he will not be liable unless he expressly agrees. There is evidence of independence in the results of the General Election in 1918 and of by-elections since, where very large sections of the workers have voted, not for the official Labour candidate, but for the candidate of another political party opposing Labour. This fact undoubtedly explains the strenuous efforts of the Labour Party to formulate a composite political programme which will appear to its Trade Unionist members as an industrial programme, and to non-industrial supporters as one primarily of a social character.

The Worker and the Community

The worker’s conception of himself in relation to the community invites a comment. As a substitute for a convincing argument that the interests of the worker are entirely separate from, and opposed to, those of the rest of the community organized on a capitalistic basis, the worker has been assiduously encouraged to develop his “class-consciousness.” If by any process of auto-suggestion he can convince himself that what tends to promote the general common weal does not tend to further the interests of Labour, but generally runs counter to them, he may more surely be relied on to adopt an attitude of militant antagonism to continuance of the present organization of industry and society. The efforts of extremists are continually directed to foment this feeling of class-consciousness until it culminates in class-warfare. I have had wide opportunities for gauging the prevalence and depth of the sentiment, and though one found it in active operation among certain groups of men on the Clyde, in Barrow, on the Mersey, and in a few other centres of advanced industrial thought, I never encountered much of it amongst the general body of working-men. They do not accept the proposition that they stand, as beings apart, in a separate category from the rest of the community. Indeed, in the latter days of the war, many Unions, recognizing the interests of their members as consumers rather than as producers, abandoned the policy of increasing wages and strongly urged the regulation of prices instead, so much did the circumstances of consumption affecting their members as citizens exceed in importance matters touching their special interests as workers.

One may carry this a stage further. In spite of the ranting of extremists that the war was an effort of capitalists to advance their own financial ends, and utterly inimical to the interests of the workers, Labour in this country stood shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the community and willingly underwent the greatest sacrifices both in the matter of military service and in regard to the suspension of Trade Union rights and customs. Had the Government at the beginning of the war courageously conscribed every person for national service, many galling disparities would never have arisen, and gross inequalities of sacrifice would have been forestalled, the aggravation of which, towards the end of the war, and not without justification, upset the equanimity of the workers and caused serious industrial upheavals. It should never be forgotten that in the early days of the war universal national service was strongly urged by prominent Labour leaders, but was killed by the cries of “Business as usual,” for which members of the Government were alone responsible.