Again, when a few weeks later the triennial election for the London County Council took place, the people of Poplar stood by their Labour member. Progressive and Labour seats fell all over London in March, 1907, but Crooks was re-elected for Poplar at the top of the poll with 3,504 votes, though the Alliance strained every nerve to oust him. Then it was that his outside accusers began to suspect they had been misled. Here was a prophet in his own country indeed--accused and slandered outside, but trusted and honoured by his neighbours. And when a month later the election of Guardians took place, and Poplar, put to a third test, declared more emphatically than ever for the Crooks policy by defeating about two-thirds of the Alliance candidates and electing an increased number of Labour men, the eyes of the public were opened. But the revival of Bumbledom was not yet at an end. The Local Government Board Inspector's report came out three and a half months after the inquiry closed. The unusual course was followed of publishing it before the evidence. When the evidence did appear it disproved many of the Inspector's conclusions. The Inspector was bound to say there was no reflection upon the "personal integrity of Mr. Crooks and Mr. Lansbury." While deprecating the standard of comfort in the workhouse, the Inspector made no reference to the doctor's statement that he did not think the inmates were too well fed or clad. Rather, he tried to undermine Crooks's policy by remarks of this kind:-- Mr. Crooks in his evidence admitted that the dietary in the workhouse was better than could be obtained by the independent labourer in the borough with a wife and two children to keep who received anything under 30s. a week. The evidence gives a different version. What Crooks said (page 389) was:-- "A man with 30s. a week with a wife and two children can only just keep himself in decency. When he gets below that he gets below the Local Government Board diet.... The men in the workhouse get a bare subsistence, and no man outside ought to be paid wages less than enable him to get that kind of living. What you have to prove is that we are giving the people in the workhouse such luxury as a man in ordinary work at from thirty to forty shillings a week could not get at home. But what he" [the legal representative of the Municipal Alliance] "does not say is that we are dealing with the very aged in the workhouse--the able-bodied, as you know, are exceedingly limited in number--but he does not appreciate for a moment that after all a man's liberty is worth something. Liberty has not fallen in value. It is a priceless something. A man will die for it. And our people will die--a good many of them--rather than go into the workhouse."