Keir Hardie (1895)

[Untitled] Refutation of Aveling


Source: The Labour Leader, Saturday 6 July 1895
Note: This article appeared in Keir Hardie's regular editorial for the Labour Leader. Edward Aveling had criticised Hardie in Les sans-travail en Angleterre (Le Destin Sociale, April 1895). The Avelings repeated the accusations in more detail in an article in their series From England in the Narodnik journal Russkoye Bogatstvo (also April 1895) - See Letters from England, 1895, ed. Williams and Chandler 2020.
Transcription and notes: by Graham Seaman for MIA, January 2021


La Jeunesse Socialiste of a recent date has the following par.:

Le Devenir Social, a new Marxist review, contains (April) an article by Dr. Aveling on ‘The Unemployed Question in England.’ This article consists of 12 pp. and is rich in valuable information. The author furnishes us not only many important statistics on misery, but, what has still more importance for us, he tells us what are the current ideas in England. A personage whose name is well enough known in France appears here. M. Kest-Hardie, [sic] who gives himself willingly for the genuine representation of the interests of the poor, announced that he had a solution, secured a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, and proved by his evidence that he knew nothing of the problem set.” The text is:

“Nous voyon paraître ici un personnage dont le nom est assez connu en France, M. Kest-Hardie, qui se donne, volontiers, pour le véritable représentants [sic] des intérêts des pauvres; il annonca qu’il avait une solution, fit nommés un comité d’enquête parlementaire, et prouve par sa déposition qu’il ne connaissait rien au problème posé.”

It is statements and conduct such as the above which cost Dr. Aveling so many friends. He knows that I was not called upon to give evidence on the unemployed problem before the Select Committee. What happened was this. When the Committee was appointed it was instructed to prepare an interim report on what should be done to meet the distress then prevailing. We were in the depth of winter and in the midst of the most severe frost known to this generation, and what I proposed was that the state should grant sufficient money to feed the people until work had been found. That proposal, as I carefully explained, was for the purposes of the interim report only, and was meant as an expedient to meet the distress then prevailing. Dr. Aveling knew all this when he wrote his article, or if he didn't knew nothing whatever of what was done by the Committee. Perhaps the correspondent who calls my attention to the matter will be good enough to make a translation of the above and send it to the editors of La Jeunesse Socialiste and Le Devenir Social.