*THE
WORKER*
Brisbane,
December 29, 1894.
Labour
in Politics.
Yet a strike, costly as it must be even to the victors,
is a crude and uncertain method of enforcing the popular will where
that will can be voiced, even inadequately, through representative
institutions. It is a desperate remedy for a desperate disease; and
the ballot box, though slower, is infinitely more sure. This was
early recognised by the leaders of the Labour Party in Queensland,
and the whole strength of the co-operating unions is now being
directed to elect a Parliament which will abolish class privileges,
reform unjust laws, and throw open to all the avenues of industry.
The success of Labour in Politics has been speedy. In five years its
parliamentary representation was increased from one to seventeen
members in a House of 72; although the infamous property-vote, which
values a man, not by manhood, but by bricks or acres, still blocks
the path of Democracy in Queensland. Thomas Glassey, first elected in
1888 to advocate labour claims, was joined by John Hoolan, in 1890;
by T.J. Ryan and G.J. Hall in 1892. At the general elections of 1893
– though thwarted and hampered by every device which the Government
in office could invent – the Labour Party polled more than a third
of the whole number of votes cast; and did the electoral law secure
proportional representation, labour would have had twenty-four
members to the Ministerialists' twenty-six, instead of fifteen to
their thirty-two. The present Government, though it has a majority in
Parliament, represents a minority of electors.
* * *
The Labour Party added to its numbers at the Townsville
and Ipswich elections, in each case winning the seat in a fashion
which left no doubt of the feelings of the electors. Thomas Glassey,
the father of the party, returning from the American trip, to which
he had been forced by ill health, was elected for Burke in the place
of John Hoolan, who resigned in his favour. This election, when the
Northern miners voted almost unanimously for a man whom they hardly
knew except by repute, and who had pre-previously represented a
constituency a thousand miles away, was another decisive proof of the
solidarity of Labour.
* * *
The work of the Labour members in the legislative
Assembly has hitherto been rather negative and critical than positive
and constructive. They are still learning the trade of legislation.
Thrown naturally into opposition to a Government, the most dishonest
that has ever administered the affairs of Queensland, they have
fought stoutly, but in most cases vainly, against that Government's
obsequious officials and unscrupulous majority. All the forms of the
House, all the resources of the Executive, have been successfully
strained to reduce the Labour members to impotence; and they have
always known that, should they succeed in pressing through the
Assembly any democratic reform, the Legislative Council, hidebound by
interest and prejudice, stood ready and eager to stifle it at
Boodlewraith's bidding.
* * *
It says much for the character and intellect of the
members of the Labour Party that, while slowly learning the rules of
the game in the face of brutal arrogance and hardly veiled hostility,
they should have already accumulated so many titles to the respect
and esteem of electors. Of actually creative work they have done, and
had the opportunity to do, little or nothing; but their criticism has
been a valuable force in aid of progressive legislation, and the
Government which at first jeered and despised them now begins dimly
to recognise that entrenched corruption has no puny foe to reckon
with. Most noticeable is the manner in which they have conquered
adverse or doubtful public opinion. Fault they have, doubtless; there
is a tail to the Labour party as to every other party; maybe some of
them see their end so clearly that they have not yet accurately
calculated the means; but the country understands that they are all
events honest, and honesty in Queensland politics is a jewel, so rare
as to be beyond all price.
The
Opposing Forces.
Thanks to the temperate and judicious conduct of the
Labour members, the furious libels circulated against them now fall
blunted and harmless. Though the heads of the Government still do
their utmost – by magnifying the angry words of injured men, or by
holding the mass of the party responsible for the ill-judged acts of
a few hot-heads to show that the success of Labour means an era of
mob rule accompanied by bloodshed and outrage, the venom has now been
rendered comparatively innocuous. The “Red Spectre” has been
stripped of his mante, and proves to be merely a broomstick ghost
ruddied by the reflection of the fertile Tozerian imagination. And
now that people see more clearly what are the merits and demerits of
the Labour Party, they see, too, how the flood of abuse poured over
that party has served its purpose of distracting attention from the
venality and incapacity of assailants.
* * *
Would the heads of the Labour Party, it is beginning to
be asked, take advantage of the confidence which placed them in
charge of the public purse to pocket immense fees out of all
proportion to the services rendered? Would the leader of the Labour
Party appoint himself to the highest paid office in his gifts, after
inducing a subservant Parliamen to extravagantly increase its
emoluments? Would the Labour Party, as shareholders and over-drafters
in a bank, plunder the public Treasury for their own benefit; and,
having practically stolen millions of public money, pass an Act to
give their robbery the sanction of law? Would the Labour Party,
having by corrupt and incompetent management of the public finances
created a huge revenue deficit, coolly evade their responsibility by
shunting the deficit on to the shoulders of posterity as a funded
debt which saddles the taxpayers with a large annual interest
payment? And is not an honest Labour Government, however
inexperienced, better than a Government which only learns from
experience how more efficiently to thieve from the people?
* * *
The Grifflwraith coalition took the bad elements from
both the parties which formed it, and became a third party which has
proved worse than either. The gang now in offices cares nothing for
principles or pledges; its only care is to defened its ill gotten
booty from the perils of forced restitution, and at all hazards to
protect the banks, syndicates, and speculator who are pouching the
revenues of the province. The mass of festering corruption behind the
doors of the Government department is vaguely hinted in the reports
of the Auditor-General; and did his officers dare to write all they
know of the manner in which public funds have been and are being
converted to private uses, even the lethargic public of Queensland
would besom out the brigands in disgust. Political morality,
gradually deteriorating from the date of the Griffilwraith coalition,
has now disappeared altogether from the Government party. There is
absolutely no job too huge or too shameful for the present occupants
of the Treasury benches to attempt. Such cynical abandonment to the
bestitudes of boodle has never before been witnessed in Australia.
The
Government Bank.
On February 28, 1894, a list of shareholders of the
Queensland National Bank was filed in the Supreme Court.Thus twenty members of the Queensland Legislature are
whole or part owners of 9086 shares in the Queensland National Bank,
on which there is a liability of £4
per share, and which are practically unsaleable sellers being
nominally quoted at 5s. On the Stock Exchange.
* *
*
It is desirable at
once to point out that any comment which might be made on this little
list can refer only to February 28, 1894, when the persons named were
shareholders. Possibly not one of them is a shareholder any longer,
and it would be obviously unjust to remark on their non-existent
connection with the Q.N. Bank on December 28, 1894. It is desirable
also to say that there is not the slightest doubt that every person
named in this list has always acted with a single brilliant eye to
the interests of his country, and has sacrificed his private profit
to the public welfare every time jis two capacities clashed. Jointly
and severally, the members of the Queensland Legislature, who are
shareholders of the Q.N. Bank, are honourable men of the most genuine
and unadultered description. No one, for example, who knows Thomas
M'Ilwraith, and who knows the Q.N. Bank, and who knows how Thomas
M'Ilwraith knows the Q.N. Bank, can doubt that if, on February 28,
1894, Thomas M'Ilwraith, the legislator, had been called on to vote
concerning the disposal of the millions of public money nominally
lying round in the Q.N. Bank, Thomas M'Ilwraith, the shareholder,
would on that day have been practically dead to the world.
* *
*
But suppose for a
moment that not the persons in the above list, but twenty other
persons, were at the same time shareholders in the bank and
legislators in Parliament; and suppose that these twenty other
persons were not honest, upright, honourable men, as is every person
named in the list, but were politicians who lived on the game,
saviours of their country for what they could make out of it,
vultures who scented the boodle from afar, low-down legislators on
whom there were many flies, and those flies blow-flies; and suppose
that these persons were both legislators and shareholders on December
28, 1894; what then would be their position? Readers of the WORKER
are aware that for the last 15 years the Q.N. Bank has transacted the
Government business, first placed in its hands by Thomas M'Ilwraith
when Premier in 1879. They are aware that the Bank must have drawn
hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit from this business, since
upwards of 23 millions of loss money has passed through it on current
account or as fixed deposits – on which the Bank paid interest from
11/2 to 4 per cent, while it was lent out again at from, say, 7 to 9
per cent. They are aware that the fixed deposits of public loan funds
were increased until in 1893, when the bank suspended payment, they
amounted to £2,441,000.
They are aware that, with the connivance of the Government, when the
Bank was re-constructed, it was permitted to lock up £2,000,000
of this sum for six years – which, of course, is excellent business
for the Bank, since the credit of the province is pledged to provide
it at a low rate of interest with money, which it lends out again at
a high rate, and possession of the money is guaranteed for a long
term by law. It is not safe to assert that these supposititious
politicians who were shareholders in the bank, together with others
who were indebted to it for advances, would join corrupt hands to
starve off their private ruin, should such ever be threatened, at any
cost to the country; and would lie unblushingly and steal audaciously
provided that their own precious pockets were kept full of the
taxpayers' money.
* *
*
What a comfort then,
to reflect that this illustration is purely imaginery; that every
Queensland politician who is a shareholder in the Q.N. Bank, and
everyone who owes it money upon an overdraft, lifts continually to a
grateful Heaven “the pure white flower of a blameless life”; and
that the only reason why they so consistenly put the people's money
in the Q.N. Bank, and so persistently refuse to take it out again, is
because, on grounds of the most exalted patriotism, they are
convinced it is much better for the people that Their money should be
safely put away in charge of a sound and dis-interested bank with
plenty of ledger figures to certify that it is all right, rather than
left knocking round loose where the horrid labour party would be sure
to pick it up and make away with it.
The
Hope of the Future.
Possibly
the Labour Party's excuse for not altogether coinciding in this view
of the case is that Labour parties all the world over have little
sense of humour. Life is to them a serious thing, and they take it
seriously. To the man who does not know where next week's bread is
coming from, there is a grim earnest-ness about this week which
somehow seems to blunt the spontaneity of laughter. Mirth only
bubbles naturally from careless minds and well-filled stomachs. The
zest of hunger jars.
* *
*
So the labour party
in Queensland does not view cheerfully the spectacle of province and
Parliament being dragged in financial chains by the Queensland
National Bank. Some day, and
soon, it hopes to
cut a connection which it believes dishonouring and demoralising, and
to administer the country's finances upon an honest basis for the
country's benefit, without permitting the the revenues to be sweated
for the benefit of political middlemen. It hopes also to establish
the principle of one person one vote, to give all of full age and
sound mind a voice in making the laws which they are expected to
obey, and to found representative institutions upon a truly
representative basis. It hopes to abolish the laws which defend the
privileges of property and deny the privileges of humanity: to sweep
away the cobwebbed statutes of barbarism and enact others breathing
the wholesome and merciful spirit of civilisation.
* *
*
“ The watchword of
the future is En masse,” says Walt Whitman; and even in the
present man is being drawn closer to man. In a savage state the ties
of kindred are disregarded, and the son clubs his old parents the
moment they grow unable to care for themselves. As knowledge grows
and sympathy widens, not only are the bonds of family strengthened ,
but those of the class, of the society, the country, humanity, spring
into vigorous life. When the pulse of Australia tingled to the tale
of the London Dock strike, there was evidence that here also the new
force of Labour solidarity – unknown fifty years ago – was
gathering strength. Thus opponents of the Labour cause have not only
to fight Labour arguments and Labour politicians – though even
these can give shrewd knocks; they have also to contend with the
zeitgeiat, the
influence which pervades thought, and life, and literature, and is
lifting society in its own despite as a tiny plant seeking the light
will lift and thrust aside a heavy stone. And when once the zeitgeist
tackles a man, he may
take his beating lying down or he may take is fighting, but he will
inevitably be beaten.
* *
*
The Labour Party in
Queensland does not seek to deny that many among its opponents hold
these views with just as much conviction as it holds its own. It
struggles for the fraternity, which is the kernel of Socialism; but
it cannot say how long the opposing forces may retard the realisation
of its splendid ideal. Yet it feels that if not in its own way, and
in its own time, yet somehow, sometime, the perfect day will follow
on the promise of the dawn.
“Tis coming up the
steep of Time,
And this old world
is growing brighter;
We may not see that
day sublime,
Yet high hopes make
the heart throb lighter;
Our dust may slumber
underground,
When it awakes the
world in wonder;
But we have felt it
gathering round -
Have heard its voice
of distant thunder;
“Tis coming; yes,
'Tis coming!
“Tis coming now,
that glorious time
Foretold by seers
and sung in story,
For which, when
thinking was a crime,
Souls leaped to
heaven from scaffold's glory;
They passed. But lo;
the works they wrought,
Now the crowned
hopes of centuries blossom;
the lighining of
their living thought
Is flashing through
us, brain and bosom;
“Tis coming; yes,
'tis coming!
Fraternity; Love's
other name!
Dear,
heaven-connecting link of being;
Then shall we grasp
thy golden dream;
As souls,
full-statured, grow far-seeing;
Thou shalt unfold
our better part,
And in our life-cup
yield more honey;
Light up with joy
the poor man's heart,
And Love's own world
with smiles more sunny;
“Tis coming! Yes,
'Tis coming!
The People's
advent's coming!
[The above appeared
in our Christmas Number, but as many of the WORKER readers
unfortunately have not sixpence to spare, we deem it only right that
they should be given a chance of reading an article which has
occasioned much stir in political circles. - Ed.]
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