Return of Henderson to House Important, Says Correspondent
By Fred Henderson Return of Henderson to House Important, Says Correspondent London. DY th*- time this letter becomes |>ul)Iic tlie most im[K)rtant i'arlanientary liye-election—from the point of...
...but of disgust at the sheer futility of a policy of mere office-holding without an attempt to advance the purposes for which we had appealed to have office entrusted to us...
...And Arthur Henderson, as secretary of the party and its chief executive officer, was the outstanding influence at that conference...
...The two vital matters of policy in regard to which these suggestions of dissension are being made are these:— Firstly, what has happened within the party since the last General Election has not been merely a consolidation of its organiiation...
...Davis is disturbed over what workers may do with any rest hours that may come to them...
...Take it, from me that it ia the moat com-1 p{e(« balderdaah and nonaenae...
...Nevertheless, the whites in the county expect a return of prosperity despite the lack of purchasing power among nearly half the population of the county...
...SOLOMON STARTS 1t)Ur OF PARTY BRANCHES Charles Solomon, New York So...
...The fact isj that our old Parliamentary machine in much of its procedure '.i a deliberate obstruction to any carrying out of democratic man-dales...
...And the debacle of the last General Election was not the result of any real turning away of working class thought from belief in those greater purposes...
...Its real purposes faded out of the public mind...
...In certain sections of North Carolina, where Negroes form about 78 per cent of the workers in tobacco industries, the tninimum wages are being withheld from them, the N.A.A.O.P...
...The discussions nowj going on within the party, on which our opponents are placing nothing even remotely concerned' with dictatorship...
...Undemocratic Procedure Unless its procedure is very seriously revised it is easily positive, when a Government is returned democratically to office with a Parliamentary majority, to hold it up and delay its effective eie« cution of its mandate for years...
...and they are concentrating all the power of their press and the oratory of their platforms on that aspect of the •ontest...
...and this majority will now lo a certainty be increased...
...President of the Board of Aldermen, was likewise present and predicted a large vote for tht entire party ticket in the Negro sections...
...and the rank-and-file, who had built up the party in that inspiration of great things, became disillusioned and lost heart and zeal...
...John L. Lewis, mine union president, urged one scale for all...
...There is nothing of any substance in it...
...The line they arc taking IS that in coming back again to Parliament Arthur is heading a movement ot dis.satisfuclion within the party against the way In which the present I.nhor group in I^nrlinmont is handling its job, ind particularly against Lansbury ind StnlTord Cripps in regard to tertain vital ninftors of policy for ;he future...
...Honestly, how many men do you know who will use them for self-improvement, for reading a worth while book, or studying something they need...
...neither doing nor attempting to do anything of a definite constructive Socialist character...
...I have already warned you about this...
...In Arkansas, white farmers are reported as sending their sons to the Civilian Conservation camps where they receive $30 a month and hiring Negroes to do the farm work at $10 and $16 a month...
...At Washington, industrial leaders continue to submit codes for approval which either state plainly a lower wage for Negroes or hide it under a North-and-South wage scale...
...Solomon presided at a meetinf of vhe city campaign committee Monday afternoon in the party office, at which plans were made for the most energetic city campaign in many years...
...AND IN ICELAND Even in Iceland, oldest of the world's democracies, there is a Socialist movement...
...fcj.: party...
...and in the House of Commons the procedure is such as to re(iuire th« best part of a year to get any definite piece of new legislation thought...
...but to fight Lansbury and Cripps within the party...
...and on this also I ask you to watch forj the Clav Cross result and see...
...There is the House of Lords...
...Purged as it happily is of the influences which were mainly responsible for imposing those futilities upon it, the party has now come to see very clearly that any repetition of such mere office-holding as that of MacDonald's Labor Government would be the final wreckage of our influence on working class thought...
...Meanwhile no provision has been made for much needed improvement In thto fortunsi of domestic workers...
...At the hearing on the soft coal mining agreement a basic wage scale of $4 a day in the South nnd $5 a dr.y in the North was proposed...
...How are we going to employ them...
...I^rtfiur Henderson's pos'^on of cadership in the party, not >nly nationally but internationally throughout Europe, gives our opponents what hey believe to be a fine opportunity of fomenting dissention amongst us...
...You know very, very few...
...There is not a trace of any such rivalry or dissension in our fighting policy...
...And our recovery in the country is due to the fact that the rank-and-file have regaincj their confidence in the sincerity of the party leaders on this fundamental issue...
...Great Democrat Is Shocked at Prospect Of Short Working Honrs John W. Davis, Democratic candidate for President in 1924 and counsel for J. P. Morgan A Co...
...We must have at our disposal powers for dealing with such wrecking action as promptly as the banking interests, for example, would be able to put the wiecking .'iction itself into operation during the interval between the announce-i.'itnt of our measures and their final Parliametnnry sanction...
...and will be a key-indication as to the con-lolidalion of our position in quite • hundred comparable constituen-ties in which supposedly safe seats were lost to us last time...
...For while we owe much to the spirit in which the Parliamentary leaders have been doing their work in the regeneration of the party, we owe even more to the insistence of the rank-ar.d-file throughout the branches and local organizations of the THE BRAY of THE WEEK Extra...
...Negroes In this county are being re-employed as farm labor, w^ich is outside the NRA regulation, at 35 to 75 cents a day, it is reported...
...The constituency—the Clay Cross division of Derbyshire—is our seat ill the time...
...Uncle Arthur But there is more to it than that...
...Memphis business men are firing Negroes on a wholesale scale, according to the Memphis branch of the N.A.A.C.P., holding that $14 a week is more than a Negro should have...
...To Lansbury and Cripps in their handling of things inside Parliament, we owe a great deal of this recovery An Absurd Suggestion To suggest, as our opponents are now suggesting, that Arthur Henderson's return to Parliament is intended to put a check on this: that the pace has become too fast, and that Arthur and the influences behind hfm are setting themselves to the task of moderating it, is nothing more th-in an attempt by our enemies to poison the minds of the rank-and-file with renewed distrust in the party leadership...
...What we have been discussing within the party is how we can best overcome these obstructions to prompt and decisive action...
...What are we going to do with all these extra hours...
...Fading In<piration Only so, it imagined, could it retain office at all: with the result that all inspiration Was rotted out of it...
...NRA Being Used to Bar Sfegro Workers in South MlitiUO labor in many sections of the South is being tricl<ed out of the benefits of the National Recovery Act, according to information received daily by llie National Association for the Advancement of Colored People...
...and his return to an active part in our fighting force in Par liame:it would be an 1 m p o r tant a d d i tion to our strength in any case...
...Of his success in the election there is no shadow of doubt at all...
...His first meetinf was Monday night at the Midwood Branch in Brooklyn, at which he was enthusiastically greeted by 4 large audience, and at which plans for the campaign were discussed...
...Is advised...
...The whole suggestion that, in supplanting Lansbury and restraining the present tendency of the party towards definite Socialist objectives, is a mere invention of the capitalist press, scared stiff at our growing strength and at its wits' end to devise lies about purely magi.a-j ary inner disunity in the counsels ot the party by way of making the rank-and-file suspicions again...
...cialist mayoralty candidate, began this week a tour of the Socialist party branches that will bring him face to face with every one of the 76 subdivisions of the party before Primary day...
...So far from being a drag on the wheel of this advance in policy, Arthur Henderson has been one of the most loyal and powerful of its promoters...
...The campaign committee will be enlarged" to include members from every part of the city and from the labor movement, the various Socialiat newspapers and other affilikted sections of the movement...
...DY th*- time this letter becomes |>ul)Iic tlie most im[K)rtant i'arlanientary liye-election—from the point of view of its l)earing Bpon the present jKisition and prospects of the I-abor Party in (Jreat IJritain—which has l)een rontested here since the la.st (ieneral KW'tion, will l)e on the point of decision...
...No question whatever ha»^ arisen of overriding the will of Parliament by dictatorship methods, but of making the will of Parliament more promptly effective than the present obstructive procedure permits it to be...
...Frank Crosswaith, candidate for...
...I have always believed, and still do," he replied, "that no man should work less than eight hours a day...
...On the strength of certain discussions now going on within the party it is suggested to the electorate that if we are returned, we shall immediately dispense with Parliamentary and democratic mctiiods and establish the methods of dictatorship...
...and has lieen devoting most of his energies to the international duties attaching lo his chairmanship of the Disarma-nidit Conference For the bye-election now pending he has been adopted as our candidate...
...Under his fatal influence, the Parliamentary Labor Party, with its own Government in office, conceived it to be its duty, not to press on with its definite Socialist purposses, but merely to hold on to office and apply itself to such minor little magnificant attempts at reforming the capitalist system as its opponents would permit and sanction...
...I will Ktk you to look out for the measure of thnt increase...
...and the new policy has no more loyal or devoted advocate...
...And I know of very few...
...In one county in Georgia, where 45 per cent of the population is colored, .'JflO Negroes who had been receiving 50 cents a day on public work were fired when the NRA agreement specified their minimum wage phould bo 30 cents an hour...
...It will not come off: watch for the Clay Cross result, and see...
...What is your real opinion on the NRA question...
...The leader of ihe party against the MacDonald betrayal at the General P^lection was Arthur Henderson, who has been out of Parliament since then...
...and this fie, linked on to the prejudice which Fascism has giver to any mention of dictatorship, is playing quite a big part ir (he Clay Cross contest...
...It has not been a sudden | rebirth of confidence...
...In Birmingham, Ala., 2,000 retail grocers have drawn up a code which provides a minimum wage of $6 a week for "Negro porters and delivery boys...
...The most widespread practice is the firing 0/ Negroes and the hiring of whites in their places because "the minimum wage is too much money for Negroes...
...You Will probably h«ve had the All Talk of Rivalry With Lansbury Deliberately Injected to Split Workers — Party Headed Straight for Socialism...
...It will be of Ihe utmost significance in denoting the scale ot our present recovery throughout the country...
...old Parliament, 2,674 Communists, 8,897 Liberals and 17,15...
...We ahall never again aak for power, or attempt to uae it if it ia entruated to ua, for any purpose leaa than the direct tranaition to a Socialiat order of things...
...in the banking inquiry before a Senate committee a few months ago, has returned from a rest in England and Scotland...
...our opponents have been iiarping on that string for some time past...
...A Socialist Government, putting definite constructive Socialist work in hand, would be for months on end at the mercy of all sorts of wrecking action taken by vested interests outside—in finance in particular—while its measures were passing slowly through the dilatory Parliamentary procedure necessary to sanction Government action...
...but a confidence which has steadily developed during these two "ears as the party and its present leaders, in conference, in Parliament and in the framing of policies for the future, have pulled the whole thing round to this new outlook...
...echoes of that suggestion repeated in your own capitalist press references to this election...
...It has been a reorientation of its thought and policy, based on a recognition of the vital error into which MacDonald's leadership led us during the years of his headship of a Labor Government...
...he was asked...
...In the circumstances of the m o V e-ment, however, a deeper significance than the merely personal one attaches to it...
...and we aro now having an orgy in the capitalist press of luggestion to the rank-nnd-fil ' of our party that this byc-elcction is the beginning of a factional fight in our own ranks...
...Tic is coming back, .';ay our opponents, not to be one of us in the Parliamentary arena...
...In the recent elections there were 6,865 Socialist votes for the Althing, 1,000-ycar...
...Policy and Method And the second point on which these suggestions of dissension are being made is with regard, not to our declared Socialist policy in the event of our being returned to, power, but to the methods by which ] we propose to carry on our work as a Socialist Government...
...In the re-orientation ot the party's thought and policy since the General Election that sort of futility has been wiped out pretty completely from our planing for any future use of power...
...On this issue also facls and the, commonspnse of the nation will expose the absurdity of the "dictatorship" lie of which our opponents aro now making snch extensive press and platform use...
...Even at the last Gen-iral Election, when MacDonald's ircachery to the movement swept many even of our supposed impregnable strongholds into the temporary possession of capitalist representatives, we held this con-jtitucncy by the substantial majority of 9552, polling 21,163 igainst the capitalist vote of 11,611...
...he added...
...Con-servatives...
...That influence of the rank-and-file finds its expression in the party organization, and came to its fullest effectiveness at the great Leicester conference at which the new policy and outlook was so definitely made clear...
Vol. 16 • August 1933 • No. 8
