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141 25 I Attend a Dramatic Meeting of the Labour Party Conference. JUNE 26 I have been looking forward with some impatience to the Conference of the British Labour Party, since I have felt that the discussions would give me a clearer understanding of the attitude and the influence of the various groups of the “working class” than I have as yet been able to get. It is most important to us in America to know just what is the position of the so-called “masses” in the British Isles, exactly what their attitude toward the war really is. The meetings began this morning. Sidney Webb sent me a platform ticket and I have been in attendance all day. During the last week or so vigorous attempts have been made by Northcliffe and the Conservative press to show that a split in the ranks of Labour was impending—and that, after all, the Labour Party did not really represent the rank and file of the working class. I see that our Labour delegates, Gompers and others, well instructed while they were here, are spreading the same doubts in America. It was plain today, from the very beginning, that violent extremes do exist in the movement. One of these extremes, the left-wing group, led by Snowden , Smillie,131 Ramsay MacDonald, and others, took an active part in the proceedings and, being even more politically minded than the rank and file, were strong for maintaining the unity of the political organization. The other extreme, the right-wing group, was entirely off stage, did not appear at the Labour Party Conference at all, but held a separate meeting 131. Robert Smillie (1857–1940) was president of the Scottish Miners’ Federation from 1894 to 1918. He later served as a Labour member of Parliament from 1923 to 1929. 142 | Reporting on Public Opinion in Great Britain, France, and Italy yesterday with the ostensible purpose of organizing a new Labour Party. This extreme movement, to which I have already referred, has for its chief leaders Havelock Wilson of the Seamen’s Union and J. B. Williams of the Musicians’ Union. This group has for some time maintained an organization called the British Workers’ League and has issued a militant weekly journal to which I have referred before, supported by contributions from Tory sources (in answer to frank appeals in The Morning Post). The brains of this movement is Victor Pisher, a clever and energetic man, a former dentist, who has never really been in the labor movement. The backbone of the group is the Seamen’s Union, which, of all organized labor, has suffered most directly from German terrorism, and is correspondingly bitter. Of the thirty thousand members of this union, only about 15 percent are on shore at any one time, so that the control of the union rests to an extraordinary degree in the officials. Hence, it has been easy to form a hasty revolutionary organization with this material and to get a publicity for it in the Conservative press out of all proportion to its importance. It is as noisy at its extreme as the bitter left-wing pacifists are at their extreme. But the great solid, experienced unions, which represent the backbone of British Labour, the miners, the engineers, the textile workers, and railroad men, were all represented in the Labour Party Conference. Practically all of the ablest leaders, from the Conservatives, Mr. Barnes of the War Cabinet, to the radical pacifist, Mr. Snowden, were there—and all striving to maintain labor unity, and to prepare for the coming elections with a strong social program . These men, of all shades of belief, look upon the Labour Party as a great permanent movement with a broad constructive policy; they all look beyond the war; and they do not propose to allow differences of belief, even upon such a vital matter as the war, to shatter their unity. What the critics and ill-wishers of the Labour Party do not realize is that the interests which bind the labor movement together at this time—economic and class interests—are far stronger than those which separate them—the difference in view concerning the war. Arthur Henderson presided and plainly dominated the proceedings. He is undeniably the shrewdest politician in the movement, a strong, clear speaker, with a masterly grasp of issues, but he suffers within the movement what any clever, compromising politician must suffer—a certain want of complete con...

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