From Workhouse to Westminster Part 11

CHAPTER XI

ON THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL

The Labour Bench at the L.C.C.--Its First Party Meeting--The Programme--Crooks's First Speech in the County Hall--The Trade Union Wages Principle Adopted--One of the Master-builders of the New London--Retrospect--Chairman of the Public Control Committee--Keeping an Eye on the Coal Sack--The End of Baby-farming in London.

When Crooks entered the London County Council in 1892 he was a stranger to almost all outside the little circle of Labour men sent up from other divisions.

As a pioneer in Labour representation in London he had more than the usual amount of suspicion and opposition to surmount. In those days a Labour representative was often subjected to fierce personal attacks both from the cla.s.s he represented and from the better-off cla.s.ses whose domains for the first time working-men were entering. His every word and act were under a double microscope. He had to be a Spartan in endurance and a saint in character.

"Imagine," he once said to me during his early days on the Council, at the time when one of its members, a peer, was a.s.sociated with a notorious case in the High Court, "imagine what an outcry there would have been up and down the land if that Councillor, instead of belonging to the House of Lords, had been a Labour representative."

The Labour bench at the County Council set the standard for sound and steady munic.i.p.al administration to the Labour Party of the entire country. John Burns sat at one end of the bench, Will Crooks at the other. Between them sat, at different times, men like Will Steadman, secretary of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and M.P. for Stepney and later for Central Finsbury; J. Ramsay Macdonald, secretary of the Labour Party and M.P. for Leicester; Isaac Mitch.e.l.l, then secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions; H.

R. Taylor, of the Bricklayers' Society, at one time Mayor of Camberwell; C. W. Bowerman, of the London Society of Compositors and M.P. for Deptford; George Dew, of the Carpenters' and Joiners' Society and secretary of the Workmen's Cheap Trains a.s.sociation; Harry Gosling, of the Watermen's and Lightermen's Society; and W. Sanders, of the Fabian Society and Independent Labour Party.

Crooks took the minutes of the first party meeting of the Labour Bench, and he holds the doc.u.ment to this day. The meeting was held at the offices of the Dockers' Union in the Mile End Road on April 26th, 1892, a few weeks after the election which first made a L.C.C. Labour Party possible. A line of policy was laid down that looks quite modest to-day, now that it has become an integral part of ordinary L.C.C.

administration. At the time it was regarded by people outside the Labour Movement as rank revolution.

In the dull and dingy room in Mile End this little band of Labour men declared for direct employment of labour and munic.i.p.al workshops. The L.C.C. Works Department, the first of its kind in the country, was the result. They agreed on a minimum wage of sixpence an hour for labourers and ninepence for artisans, with a maximum working week of fifty-four hours. In many L.C.C. departments higher wages were afterwards secured, and in others an eight-hour day was introduced. They demanded a system of retiring pensions for workmen as for officials. This, too, in certain departments soon became practical politics on the County Council.

A few days later Crooks was making his first speech at the County Hall.

He took part in the debate on the Fair Wages Clause, the final form of which was settled on the principle he laid down. Up to the birth of the London County Council, which was only three years old when Crooks joined it, munic.i.p.al bodies knew nothing of Fair Wages Clauses in contracts.

The London County Council set an example which has since been followed by public authorities all over the kingdom.

This triumph for Labour was not won without a keen struggle. All kinds of proposals were discussed with a view to defining a fair wage. It looked as though the Labour Bench were in danger of losing the day, when the situation was saved by what John Burns afterwards told Crooks was a happy inspiration.

The County Council was about to adopt what the Labour Bench regarded as an unsatisfactory resolution. Crooks hastily wrote out an amendment which ultimately formed the basis of a settlement. He showed it to Burns, as leader of the Labour Party, and the latter immediately got up and moved it. The words are worth repeating, since they supplied the foundation for a Fair Wages Clause destined to become famous:--

That all contractors be compelled to sign a declaration that they pay the trade union rate of wages and observe the hours of labour and conditions recognised by the London Trade Unions, and that the hours of labour be inserted in and form part of the contract by way of schedule, and that penalties be enforced for any breach of agreement.

Before long this was the only proposal before the Council. The original motion was withdrawn, while amendment after amendment directed against the proposal Crooks had prepared was thrown out. Moderate and Progressive members got up to say that to enforce trade union wages was to fly in the face of political economy. It was this remark that drew from Crooks his maiden speech. How little he was known then may be judged from the fact that the _Daily Chronicle's_ report the next day referred to him as Mr. Brooks. Thus:--

Mr. Brooks said that political economy never took humanity into account, but unless humanity was considered there could be no justice to the worker. No contractor had ever been ruined by paying trade union rates of wages. The best wages had always meant the best workmen. Trade unions were anxious that the surplus labour of the country should be employed, and they only asked the Council to fix a minimum rate of wages. The sooner the Council employed men direct the better. In the name of humanity and Christianity he appealed to the Council to adopt trade union rates of wages.

The day this report appeared Crooks received the following letter from "Marxian," of the _Labour Leader_, his friend George Samuel:--

MY DEAR CROOKS,--Are you the Mr. Brooks of to-day's _Chronicle_ report? If so, permit me to congratulate you on your speech. It struck the one true note in all the weary debate. The awakened consciousness of man has already interfered pretty considerably with the economic "law of population" and must interfere even more drastically with the economic "law of supply and demand." Both laws are for semi-brutes and not for men. To say that supply and demand shall settle wages is brutal. You may not be a very learned man, friend Crooks, but at any rate you are not weighted with that false learning which slays the heart to feed the head.

The fair wages debate went on from week to week at the County Hall, not wearily, as Crooks's correspondent suggests, but with much spirit and party feeling. Finally Lord Rosebery, as chairman, advised the Council to hold a special meeting to settle the question. Before that meeting took place the chairman invited Crooks to discuss the matter with him with a view to arriving at a compromise likely to commend itself to the majority. Crooks refused to withdraw his claim for trade union wages, and after the two had had a long informal talk on the question, Lord Rosebery accepted the Labour member's view.

When the special meeting a.s.sembled the late Lord Farrer (then Sir Thomas Farrer) carried an amendment to the trade union motion. By this amendment the word "London" was deleted from the motion, and it was made to read that contractors should "pay the trade union rate of wages and observe the hours of labour and conditions recognised by the trade unions _in the place or places where the contract is executed_."

It will be seen, then, that the principle of trade union wages as laid down by Crooks remained intact. On this principle the L.C.C. Fair Wages Clause was established. It stipulates that the "rates of pay are to be not less nor the hours of labour more than those recognised by a.s.sociations of employers and trade unions and in practice obtained." It provides further that "where in any trade there is no trade union, the Council shall fix the rates of wages and the hours of labour."

The Labour Councillor for Poplar was soon on the warpath again. He called the Council's attention to the low wages paid to some of the park attendants. He instanced the man in charge of Red Lion Square, who was receiving no more than thirteen s.h.i.+llings a week.

"The man's not worth more," shouted a member. "He's got a wooden leg."

"Yes, but he hasn't got a wooden stomach," came the retort from the Labour Bench.

And the man with the wooden leg, as well as other park attendants, had their wages brought up to the living standard.

Crooks soon became a good all-round munic.i.p.al administrator, as well as a Labour representative. He had stated in his first election address:--

As a workman I should seek especially to represent the interests of the working cla.s.ses who form three-fourths of the ratepayers of Poplar, while giving every attention to the general work of the London County Council and to the general interests of Poplar.

I am heartily in favour of what is known as the London programme--of Home Rule for London, as enjoyed by other munic.i.p.alities; of the relief of the present ratepayers by taxing the owner as well as the occupier; and of the equalisation of rates throughout London for the relief of the poorer districts.

I am in favour of munic.i.p.al owners.h.i.+p or control of water, tramways, markets, docks, lighting, parks, and the police.

I would support all measures which would help to raise the standard of life for the poor, especially in the way of better housing and a strict enforcement of the Public Health Acts.

Crooks, in fact, became one of the master-builders of the New London which the L.C.C. created. In face of heavy opposition he was one of that strenuous band of stalwarts who in the 'nineties raised London out of the chaos and darkness that reigned before the County Council was called into being, and gave the capital for the first time a sense of civic unity.

In later years the claims of Parliament turned much of his energy into other useful channels. But to this day he still remains a member of the London County Council, and though now so much engrossed in national politics, he is none the less proud of his record in the service of London. He never looks back to the strenuous 'nineties on the County Council without being thankful.

"I believe we put new life into the munic.i.p.al politics of the whole country in those days," he tells you. "The London County Council showed the people of England what great powers for good lay in the hands of munic.i.p.alities. We became a terror to all the monopolists who had fattened on London for generations. We struck at slum-owners, ground landlords, the music-hall offenders, food adulterators, and those who robbed the poor by unjust weights. We swept the tramway and water companies out of London, and by subst.i.tuting public control gave the people better and cheaper services. We broke down the contractors' ring and started our own Works Department, the worst abused but the most successful and the most daring munic.i.p.al undertaking of the last quarter of a century.

"They were glorious days. That ten years' struggle between the people and the monopolists was a strife of giants. The victory we gained in London was a victory for progressive munic.i.p.al government all over the country.

"We on the Labour Bench were in the front of the battle all the time.

While the big campaigns were going on we were not neglecting the smaller duties. We carried the County Council right into the working-man's home.

We not only protected poor tenants from house-spoilers and extortionate water companies, we gave a helping hand to the housewife. We saw that the coal sacks were of proper size, that the lamp oil was good, the dustbin emptied regularly, that the bakers' bread was of proper weight, that the milk came from wholesome dairies and healthy cows, that the coster in the street and the tradesman in the shop gave good weight in everything they sold."

For several years Crooks was a member and at one time chairman of the Public Control Committee of the London County Council. It was this committee that looked after these numerous small duties bearing so important a relation to the working-man's home. Crooks kept a keen eye on the coal sack. It was found that all over London coal was being delivered in sacks too small to hold the prescribed weight. There was consternation among the offending dealers when the County Council began to pounce down upon them.

In reference to this matter Crooks tells a quaint story. During one of the L.C.C. elections he heard a couple of lads in heated altercation.

"The County Council! Don't you talk to me about them people," one of them cried. "They oughter be all at the bottom of the sea. They nearly ruined my pore ole dad."

"That's bad. How was it?"

"Afore the County Council was heard of a two-hundredweight sack didn't have to be no bigger 'n that"--holding his hand on a level with his chest--"but now they have to be this size"--and his hand went above his head. "Nearly ruined the pore ole man," he added. "He ain't got over it yet."

The Public Control Committee did more than ensure proper weight; it saw to it that dealers did not deliver coal inferior in quality to that described on the ticket. It recovered damages from a merchant who misrepresented the quality of his coals. When the case was reported to the L.C.C. one of the older members, to whom this kind of thing was wholly a new exercise of public duty, declared that he supposed the Council would next be insisting that the workman's Sunday joint consisted of nothing but good meat.

"And why not?" asked Crooks, who followed him in the debate. "If the man pays for fresh meat and receives bad meat, and is too poor to take action himself, it is the duty of the public authority to see that he gets justice."

There is no more ardent believer than Crooks in Ruskin's dictum that when a people apologises for its pitiful criminalities and endures its false weights and its adulterated food, the end is not far off.

One at least of the pitiful criminalities of our modern civilisation--baby-farming--was dealt a blow during his chairmans.h.i.+p of the Public Control Committee from which it is not likely ever to recover. He represented the L.C.C. before the Committee of the House of Commons which considered the Infant Life Protection Bill promoted by the Council. That was before his own Parliamentary career began. Day after day the Labour man strove with barristers and Members of Parliament in the Commons Committee Room to safeguard infants of misfortune from cruelty and neglect. His advocacy prevailed. The Bill was pa.s.sed.