| Main Performers | Mr Anderson,
Mr George Bernard Shaw,
Miss Mary Macarthur,
Mrs Beatrice Webb,
Mr Sidney Webb,
Mr George Lansbury - speakers |
| Performance Notes | This meeting was to 'Demand legislation next session for a minimum of civilised life'.
"EIGHT THOUSAND DEMAND LEGISLATION - A CIVILISED LIFE FOR ALL
A magnificent demonstration in London's largest auditorium inaugurated the War Against Poverty which the ILP and Fabian Society are waging this winter. The Albert Hall was well filled, and a spirit of determination prevailed. Every speaker did well, and strangers to the Labour and Socialist movement must have left the meeting at the close with the realisation that they had been in the presence of some mighty force of social regeneration. If the success achieved in London can be repeated in every centre of population in the United Kingdom public opinion will be aroused to such a degree that it will be difficult for the Government to close their ears to the demands of the workers for a living wage and human conditions of life.
SUFFRAGISTS AND MR MACDONALD
The one discord was occasioned by supporters of woman suffrage who are dissatisfied with the attitude of the Labour Party. Before the meeting, a letter had been forwarded to Mr Ramsay MacDonald, who had been advertised to preside, asking him to explain the 'pledge' he gave nearly a year ago at a Labour Party demonstration in the same hall. Mr MacDonald, as readers know, has been in poor health for some time. When the House of Commons adjourned in August, his doctor ordered complete rest, but the Midlothian vacancy occurred and, forgetting his weakness, he threw himself heart and soul into the campaign. Since then his condition of health has caused his friends some little anxiety; I was present at the dinner to 'The Citizen' staff a week ago, and it was then apparent that Mr MacDonald was on the verge of a breakdown. The announcement that his doctor had prohibited his attendance at the Albert Hall meeting did not come, therefore, as a surprise, and the suggestion made by certain interrupters that he was 'afraid to face the music,' could scarcely have been less generous of more deserving of contempt.
Obviously Mr MacDonald was the only person who could answer the question asked in the letter, by Mr Anderson, who presided in is stead, had scarcely uttered three sentence when a man rose and demanded he should reply to it. At that moment Mr Anderson had not seen the communication, not was he aware of its contents, and he informed the questioner of this fact. The man rose from his seat, walked to the platform, and laid the letter in Mr Anderson's hands. Mr Anderson glanced at it, expressed his inability to answer the questions for Mr MacDonald, and promised to deal with the suffrage question before he sat down. But the militants were not satisfied. From all over the hall interruptions came, and for some time it was impossible for Mr Anderson to proceed. He kept his temper admirably, and so did the audience; the women must have realised they were among friends for scarcely a harsh word was spoken. One pictured the scene of fury and violence which would have occurred if it had been a Liberal gathering!
MR ANDERSON'S DECLARATION
'No man or woman believes more strongly in woman suffrage than I,' declared Mr Anderson, when he could speak again. 'If I were in Parliament and had the power to turn out a Government which refused votes for woman I would turn out the Government, but I would try at the same time to see that I did not put in another Government opposed to woman suffrage.' The audience cheered, and soon the evident earnestness of Mr Anderson triumphed over the opposition.
'Before we can tackle to the full our social and industrial evils, we must have -,' he began, only to be interrupted by a woman's voice in the gallery, 'votes for women.' Mr Anderson smiled whilst the audience cheered. 'I have no quarrel at all with that observation,' he said 'because it was exactly what I was going to say.'
In subsequent speeches the militant suffragists occasionally interjected remarks, but such emphasis was laid on the necessity of extending the franchise to women that their jeers were changed to cheers. Mrs Sidney Webb, particularly, spoke with extraordinary cleverness, and, it was impossible not to applaud her repeated taunts at the men for the mess they have made of things. Mr Webb was not so successful. Alone among the speakers he revealed irritation, and his repartee, though smart, was calculated to arouse bitterness. Perhaps the best commentary on the attitude of the militants was the presence of Mrs Fawcett and a body of representatives from the National Union of Woman Suffrage Societies, who, of course, heartily supported the platform.
MESSAGE FROM HARDIE
The first cheer of the evening was aroused by the announcement that greetings had been received from Mr Keir Hardie. 'I am going away to the West,' he wrote from America, 'to work among the miners on behalf of the Socialist Party
' Mr W S Sanders, secretary of the ILP and Fabian Joint Committee, read this letter, also a message from Mr MacDonald, apologising for his enforced absence.
Mr Anderson described the campaign as 'a war against disease, destitution, and poverty.' In strong, ringing tones, he stated the case against 'present-day civilisation,' and the case for a minimum civilised life for all. 'Strikes cannot be averted by trying to limit Trade Union powers. Parliament and local councils must, by legislative and administrative action, do what Trade Unions are trying to do in the industrial sphere.' The eight-hour working day will not solve the unemployed problem, but it will do much to alleviate it. The Government has done something to meet the demand of miners for a minimum wage. Must other workers strike and dislocate industry before their grievances are attended to? In addition to these reforms, healthy homes must be secured for all, the hungry children must be fed, their ailing bodies tended to at school clinics, the poor law system must be swept away and unemployment must be prevented. These reforms will not be introduced by either Liberal or Tory Governments except as they are compelled to introduce them by the Labour and Socialist movement. Such was the gist of Mr Anderson's speech.
MISS MACARTHUR'S ELOQUENCE
A resolution summarising the demands of the national conference which had met during the day
was moved by Miss Mary Macarthur. She spoke with moving eloquence. 'We are in the largest hall of the richest city in the world,' she said, slowly and paused. 'We are here to demand a minimum of civilised life for the people. What a commentary on our boasted civilisation! Science has made the possibilities for the human race greater than ever before. The actualities are more grim than in the dark ages.'
Miss Macarthur spoke mainly of the condition of manual woman workers, whose average wage she estimated at 8/- a week. Low wages mean mental, moral and physical degradation, she declared, and she urged the necessity of legalising a minimum wage as the first step forward. 'It will give women workers a platform from which they will be able to win better things,' she declared. 'Everything which enables them to think is helping on the women's cause.' In a fine peroration Miss Macarthur described this as a holy war against poverty and ignorance.
MRS WEBB CAPTURES AUDIENCE
Mrs Webb captured the vast audience by her opening sentences. 'I came to this meeting in fear and trembling,' she said, 'but seeing that this meeting is so much in favour of women I speak with confidence. I have always felt that women are not only the equal, but in many respects the superior of men.' How could the militant suffragists interrupt after that?
Mrs Webb has a remarkable power of painting word-pictures. She had the tragedies of the Poor Law system very real. 'I see before me a respectable family standing outside the workhouse gates,' she said, stretching out her hands, and in our imagination we saw them too - the man with sunken head, the woman with apron to her eyes, the children clinging to her skirts. 'What do we do to them? We, the Government of England, break up that family. Before the man enters the workhouse gates he is stripped of his citizenship, reduced to the level of a criminal, a lunatic - and a woman. We demoralise him, he make him a wastrel.'
'And the woman? We cannot strip from her what man has withheld from her, but we strip her of what God has given her - her children. We send her to the wash-tub, or into the sewing room, where she is forced to associated with prostitutes and imbeciles. We take the little children, if they are under five, up, up, the stone steps to the workhouse nursery. There they remain day in, day out, until they go to the Poor Law school, or are carried down to the Poor Law cemetery in their little coffins. For twice as many infants die in the nurseries of the Poor Law as in the homes of their parents.' The Education Authority, Mrs Webb urged, must be made responsible for the whole life of the child.
BERNARD SHAW'S BRILLIANCE
'Mr Bernard Shaw,' said Mr Anderson, as Mrs Webb sat down. The audience cheered loud and long, whilst G.B.S. stood quite at ease swinging his spectacles to and fro at the end of a dazzling gold chain. Then, as the applause ceased, he folded his arms, threw back his head, and with Olympian assurance, told the audience what he thought of them, himself, and of poverty, and of the world in general. His brilliant speech is fully reported elsewhere; I need only emphasise the deep earnestness with which he closed. The following paragraph is worth giving twice:-
'If you were reasonable beings - which you are not - what would you expect? Would you not expect this country to be getting richer and richer from one generation to another? Would you not expect the children to be healthier and heavier, the men and women stronger and more beautiful? Would you not expect its slums to be disappearing by magic, its disease to be passing away, the necessity for working long hours to be ceasing? Would you not be expecting this earth to be fulfilling its real destiny, to be transforming itself into the Kingdom of Heaven?' Instead of this, Mr Shaw showed how degradation is spreading over the land. He called upon the young men and women to enrol themselves as soldiers in a holy crusade to inaugurate a men and better epoch.
LANSBURY'S NOBLE SERMON
The last contribution to this feast of oratory was by Mr George Lansbury, whose reception was even greater than Shaw's. He delivered a noble and uplifting speech which appealed to the highest and best forces in human nature. 'We must go to the poor and tell them they are of as much value as we are,' he cried. 'Each of us must demand for them the same kind of life as we want ourselves.' And later on - 'The real fact is the poor don't care for us, not for anyone else. They think we want them to be satisfied with less than we have ourselves. You will never arouse any people to fight with you unless you make them realise that the ideal you have for yourself if the ideal you have for them.' The more one thinks about this declaration the more one realises the Lansbury has here touched on the very heart of the whole problem.
'To imagine that you can impose salvation on the poor is to make the greatest mistake in the world. Whatever we have of culture, of education, of leisure, every scrap of it is got at the expense of the poor and you won't rally them to fight until you go to them and admit that. We must make them understand that they are Men and Woman and are entitled to the fullest and most abundant life that can collectively be provided for them. I wonder how many of us make any great sacrifice for our ideals. Our movement wants more of the religious spirit today than ever before. You may talk about worn-out shibboleths and creeds, but it is the spirit of religion you want, the spirit which makes men and women do things without any thought of what they are going to get out of it. I am convinced in my heart that we are not going to make progress as a nation until you and I have more religious fire without our souls, making each one of us an apostle of a great creed.'
Mr Lansbury assured the suffragists that all on the platform believed that only by men and women cooperating together can social salvation come, but argued that political freedom is only a part of a greater fight to sweep away those economic conditions 'which drive women to prostitution and make all of us live lives which are unworthy of human beings.' The meeting was closed by a short speech by Mrs Sidney Webb, who urged the importance of every member of the audience carrying on the War Against Poverty in his own sphere, particularly in the forthcoming municipal elections. With a great shout the resolution was declared unanimously carried. We went out into the misty night with the vision of a clear light before us. A.F.B." (Labour Leader, 17 October 1912)
Bernard Shaw's entire speech was published in Labour Leader, 17 October 1912. His speech included the quote -
"The task before us is to turn out a whole epoch of civilisation, to turn out a generation which has become entirely corrupt by worn-out traditions and prejudices, to inaugurate and bring in a new epoch. It can only be done by the spreading of a great conception among the people, of a higher conception of life. You, who are here, are a picked and chosen few. I wish you would go amongst those who think they are money-making, and who are really grinding each other down, and break their windows
The greatest curse of poverty is that it destroyed the will power of the poor until they become the most ardent supporters of their own poverty."
Mr Ramsay MacDonald was billed to speak at this event, but could not due to ill health.
LSE Archives hold a pamphlet about this event. |