The Workman in the House of Commons
To-day there are more than forty workmen in the House of Commons, and the great majority of these have served an apprenticeship in municipal and trade union offices. Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Stafford, South Wales, Glasgow, Dundee, Leicester, Norwich and London, all have their elected Labour members in Parliament, and a marked preference is shown for the man who has proved his honesty and capacity in the municipality, or as the leader of his trade union. All the miners’ representatives are tried and experienced men. Mr. G.N. Barnes, M.P., was for ten years the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Mr. Clynes, M.P., was elected to the office of district secretary of the Gas Workers’ and General Labourers’ Union twenty years ago; Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., has been general secretary of the same union since 1889, and has sat on the West Ham Corporation for more than sixteen years. Mr. George Lansbury, M.P., and Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., are well known for their work on the London County Council and on their local borough council and board of guardians. Similarly with other Labour members of Parliament. Their lives are marked by a sense of public responsibility, with the result that in the House of Commons they are grave, business-like, and undemonstrative. The Labour members do not make “scenes”; they respect the rules of the House and the dignity of the National Assembly, partly because they are all in sober middle age, but more because they have learnt that public business can only be carried on by due observance of order; and they are in Parliament to get business done for their constituents, to promote legislation that will make life easier for the working class. When Mr. Victor Grayson, in the exuberance of youth, and with a passion that blazed out against the misery of the poor, made a “scene” in the House of Commons, and was expelled, the Labour members were quite sincere in their disapproval. They understood, with a wider knowledge than Mr. Grayson possessed, that “scenes” alienated sympathy in the House, were not helpful in debate, and were not popular with the electors.
The member who would succeed in the House of Commons must respect the usages of the House, and show himself loyal to its laws of debate. As long as this respect and loyalty are shown the Labour member is accepted by his fellow-members as one who has been elected to the greatest club in the world, and is justly entitled to all the privileges of membership. For the British House of Commons is a democratic assembly, and in its collective pride it cares nothing for the opinions or social rank of its members. All it asks is that the newly-elected member should be alive to the honour of membership, should be modest in his bearing, and should as soon as possible “catch the tone of the House.” He may be a labourer, or the son of a belted earl; the House is indifferent so long as his parliamentary manners are good.
The House of Commons is a far more orderly assembly than it was a hundred years ago; it is more sober and less noisy, and the arrival of Labour members has increased rather than diminished its good behaviour. It is also a far more industrious assembly, and the influence of the Labour party compels an amount of legislation that honourable members would have thought impossible fifty years ago.