Neither of these revolutionary bodies has a complete organization like
those of continental countries. They have never held a Congress, either
national or provincial. They consist of a central committee in London,
and detached local groups in the provinces, and their membership is not
accurately known, but it is not extensive. It is in both cases
declining, and it has always been variable, young men joining for a year
or two, and then leaving. Their chief success has been among the miners
of the North of England, and they have returned three members to the
School Board of Newcastle. There is one socialist member in Parliament,
Mr. Cunningham Graham, but he has not been returned on socialist
principles or by a socialist vote; and hitherto the party has failed to
obtain any serious support at the elections. At the election of 1885,
Mr. John Burns, socialist candidate for Nottingham, had only 598 votes
out of a total poll of 11,064, and Mr. J. Williams, the socialist
candidate for Hampstead, had only 27 out of a total of 4,722. Mr. Burns,
however, has since been returned to the London County Council, and will
not improbably succeed in being returned to Parliament at next election.
He is a working engineer, but is much the strongest leader English
socialism has produced, an orator of great power, an excellent
organizer, and the head and representative of a new labour movement
which is likely to play a considerable part in the immediate future, and
which is certainly fermented with a good measure of socialistic leaven.
The New Unionism, as this movement is sometimes called, represents
mainly the opinion of the new trade unions of unskilled labour--dockers
and others--which have sprung into existence recently, and it was strong
enough at the Trade Union Congress in 1890 to carry the day against the
old unionism of the skilled trades by a considerable majority in favour
of the compulsory and universal eight hours day. But, as Mr. T. Burt,
M.P., the miners' parliamentary representative, said in his speech to
the Eighty Club two months afterwards, the New Unionism is, after all,
only the young and inexperienced unionism, and must needs run now
through the same kind of errors which the older trade unions have gone
through before, but will, like the older unions, learn, by discussion
and experiment, to keep within the lines of practicable and beneficial
action. However that may be, for the moment, at any rate, the fortunes
of English socialism seem to lie with Mr. John Burns and his labour
movement, and not with the two socialist organizations which appear to
have already reached their height, and to be now on the decline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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