Keir Hardie (1893)
Source: The Burnley Express, Wednesday 18 January 1893, p.3
Note: The speech argues against the ‘fourth clause’ set at Manchester, which would have barred the ILP from campaigning for MPs from other parties.
Transcription: by Graham Seaman for MIA, January 2021
On Monday night Mr. Hardie, M.P., addressed a fairly large audience in the Cloth Hall, Colne, Mr. White, junior, presiding.
The hon. member said it was surprising to find labour organisations all over the country which gave prominence to questions such as an improved system of government, extension of the franchise to every adult, payment of members of Parliament by the State, reform of the registration laws, abolition of the House of Lords, or the disestablishment of the Church, whose programme contained scarcely a single item of what they who belonged to the Labour party considered Labour questions. Those political reforms he had indicated, good they might be of themselves, were only means to an end. That which to-day hindered
from being solved was the lack of economic knowledge amongst the masses of the people. Whilst he was in favour of all those political reforms, he was much more in favour of abolishing the landlord and the capitalist. He found himself in conflict with those true and trusted friends of labour who thought their objects would be best accomplished by working in and through the Liberal party. He hoped never to see the day when the Independent Labour party just newly formed would be a tail or wing of any political party now in existence. If that day came he would retire quietly to his country home; but it was because he believed the Labour party was destined to be a separate party, and in the very near future be
that he went hopefully and joyfully forward to consecrate his life to the service of the Independent Labour movement. How was that to be carried out? There was in the Independent Labour party, as there formerly was in the Liberal party, the Manchester school, who said to-day that the duty of the Labour party was to abstain altogether from voting unless the Labour party was able to put forward a candidate. It was a heroic proposal, it was the ideal state affairs for the labour movement, but after all they were not all heroes. If at a general election the Labour party contested 272 seats it would do well. That would leave 400 constituencies where there would be no Independent Labour candidate. If they said to the workers in those constituencies they were to from voting they would very properly not heed them. If they had in every constituency in the country the Labour party organised on
and they were recommended to vote in one direction and for one political party, not because they believed in that party, but because they believed they were able thereby to realise their own programme to some extent, would not that be a more effective object lesson to the party that did not get the vote than if they abstained from voting altogether? Correcting a statement made at Bradford, he said that taking eight constituencies in which at the last general election there was a Labour candidate in opposition to candidates of both great political parties, in these constituencies the Labour vote was 15,000 out of 96,000, or 14½ per cent, of the electorate of those constituencies. If, he continued, they could get every constituency in the country to organise the labour vote as had been done in those eight constituencies, he believed that when
came round the Independent Labour party would be able to control at least 20 or 25 per cent of the voting power of the electorate of Great Britain; and when they remembered that the last general election, leaving out Ireland, was won by something like five per cent. of the electors who voted, they would see the power which belonged to any party which could control and direct twenty per cent. of the voting power of the community. Referring to the pending Parliamentary elections, the speaker said that when the Halifax election was over the Independent Labour party in the House of Commons would be stronger than was to-day.
selecting candidate, and he trusted the Labour party would return the compliment by ignoring the Liberal selection and selecting a candidate of their own. In Huddersfield, not only had the Liberals ignored the Labour party, but they had literally courted destruction by flying in the face of the Labour party, and selecting a candidate who was chiefly known throughout Yorkshire for his hostility to the Labour movement, a man who had said, so he (the speaker) was told, that he would rather lose the election than vote for Eight Hours Bill for miners, a man who refused to recognise trade union rules in his printing office, where he (Mr. Keir Hardie) was told he printed a news-paper. That was the man whom
had selected to represent labour in the House of Commons. And those were the men who said they were the friends of labour. He trusted that at Huddersfield the Labour party would select an Independent Labour candidate, and if the election resulted in a loss both to the Liberal and Labour party the fault would be on the shoulders of those men who were false to the cause of democracy in selecting a candidate such as he had described. Answering a question by Mr. Marooney, the speaker said did not consider Home Rule a social movement, but a democratic one, and as such it had his heartiest support.