Inits early days the I. L. P. was e2- sentially a worker's party. It was the Party of the left wing of the trade unionist movement. Its ideology was epitomized in the per-fon of Mr. Keir Hardie, " blun* honest, ignorant idealist, who Preached the brotherhood of man at lull times and in all countries. By 1914 the Party approximated to the Centre of the Labour movement. The left ard right wings Syndicalist and Lib-Lab. During the war it devoted the whole of its energies to hindering the cause of the Allies, and lost the bulk of its working class members. Its po! tion to-day is peculiar. There has teen an inflex into its ranks of hundreds of, disgruntled ex-Liberals who do not' work with their hands for a living, and are not feeling the economic pinch Tike the average trade unionist in an unsheltered trade, Labour polities are a game, a career, or a means of register! their opposition to a. traditional Conservat'sm butter matter as it is to the average worker. And so we see the I. L. P getting more and more out of touch Jwith its old type of supporter. The! realist section of the Labour movement and the one that foots the bill financially, has little interest in all these academic discussions on the exact form of Socialism the high-brows of the I. L. P. propose i: enslave us under. "They are more concerned with the problem of whether better living conditions can be won by siding with the trade union right wing that advocates ce-operation with the employers or Baldwinism, or whether it would be more profitable in the long run to hack Russia and the Soviets on the evidence provided by the famous delegation in their extremely attractive report. The case against the ey is a growing belief up with Capitalism in the United Kingdom in so far as its capacity to deliver the goods in the shape of gocd wages is con-jeered. Every trade union branch has now its prophet of doom preach ing to the members that if the present system. is allowed to continue the Britith workman must face the competition of native factory. hands in Eastern countries working heaven knows how many hours a day for a handful of rice, or a few trouser buttons, or some such trifle. Against the Soviet idea. there is the belief, clumsily inculcated by: the Communist propagandists, that it can only come by way of a national upheaval and much bloodshed. At
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.