MIA > Archive > Hyndman > Adventurous Life
One break in a party almost certainly begets another; but for two years after the Morris upset we went on very well, except for shortness of money, which hampered us in many ways, and at last compelled us to produce Justice, chiefly by our own gratuitous work, in a dingy but cheap ground floor and cellarage in Sandland Street, Bedford Row. I confess I never thought I could have set up type myself, and I admit a worse compositor could scarcely have been found, even amongst the most unskilled workers of London, than I was. Others ran me pretty close for ineptitude at the same occupation; but happily we had some of the best compositors in London, who had embraced the cause – it was the cause in those days and no mistake – who lent us invaluable assistance.
When I see a Cabinet Minister of quite third-rate abilities flaunting along in Court dress and receiving £5000 a year for betraying his own class by selling the work of such men as these, and the lives of such martyrs to Socialism as Pearson and Sinclair and Pickard Cambridge and Geldart and Culwick and Evans, for his personal gain and emolument; when I observe intriguing mediocrities deliberately heading back progress and posing as Socialist statesmen, while all the time they have their private arrangements with the leaders of a capitalist faction for their own benefit, my memory takes me back instinctively to the days of Sandland Street, and the long long years of wholly unremunerated sacrifice which have enabled these recent intruders to trade away the movement in this commercial fashion.
It is all fine to look back upon, but it was no joke at the time. There was but one thing to be thought of – the paper must be got out. We laughed and chaffed and patted one another on the back, but the work was done. When, however, influenza struck us seriously, in the time when influenza was a really dangerous disease, that was a blow. How we got through it I really don’t know. It was double and even treble duty for those who kept well, or for those who came back when others fell ill. Happily, I myself never suffered, though I was in the thick of it all through. But when one night Hazell, our head printer, in taking the “forme” for our front page down from the ground floor to the cellarage let it tumble out of his hands and “pied” all the type, we thought our last week had come, and that Justice must cease to inspire and enlighten this world of misrule. However, there was nothing for it but to set the type all over again, weary as we were, and Justice appeared as usual that week to encourage the comrades and keep the red flag flying.
I wonder we succeeded during those years of stress and strain, especially with that well-printed, well-written, and well-got-up paper the Commonweal running in competition with us; but succeed we did. Just as the Social-Democratic Party has lasted much longer than any other party of the people ever set on foot in this country, so Justice has held its own for many more years than any other proletarian journal ever founded in Great Britain.
It was in this period, also, that we were carrying on our long, weary, and depressing agitation on behalf of the unemployed, as well as our never-ceasing campaign for free speech in the open spaces of the streets and in Hyde Park, which led many of our old comrades to gaol. In this work John Burns took an active part. He had joined our party early in 1884 and though he was at that time as ignorant and uncouth a recruit as ever came among us, he soon displayed qualities of street oratory and self-advertisement which were at the time very valuable to us. I set to work, therefore, in conjunction with Champion and the Misses Roche to educate him, and he proved a very apt though superficial pupil, his colossal conceit preventing him from ever thoroughly going to the bottom of any subject. I need scarcely say that had we known the use to which he was to put our tuition we should all of us have left him to get out of his ignorance as best he could. And here I may add, what no doubt his Liberal purchasers have long since discovered, that during the years that Burns was in the Social-Democratic Federation he was not of the very slightest use in committee. I do not think he ever suggested anything which was of value, and it is the greatest mistake possible to suppose that he is formidable in debate. Most amusing evidence of this was publicly afforded not long before he entered into those engagements with the Liberal Party that eventually landed him in the Cabinet.
For some reason Burns thought proper to make a violent attack upon Quelch. It was decided the matter should be debated out. Accordingly, the Bricklayers’ Hall in the Blackfriars Road was taken and a set debate between Burns and Quelch was arranged. Quelch was not nearly so well known among our own people as he is now, and it was quite the general impression that Burns would easily get the better of him. Being intimately acquainted with both the men I was of a different opinion; but I was in a small minority. The discussion was as dramatic and amusing a scene in its way as I have ever been present at. Burns opened his indictment with great vigour and a fine piling up of denunciation and adjectives on Quelch’s head. That malefactor’s delinquencies were, in fact, displayed before the audience in all their atrocious turpitude. He really did appear to be as bad a man as verbose and vehement rhetoric could make him out to be. Even some of Quelch’s friends wondered what the result of it all would be. For Burns’s periods sound quite imposing until you listen to them seriously, when the absence of argument at once strikes the hearer, and, as those present were not sufficiently critical to note this drawback at the moment, Burns sat down amid great applause.
Then Quelch had his innings. He began lamely and awkwardly, as if not quite sure of himself, as he always did in those days. Burns sat enveloped in multitudinous smiles, and was constantly turning round to call attention to his superiority and his triumph. This did not last long. Quelch began to argue. Burns was compelled to pay attention. Quelch’s argument developed into retort and sarcasm. Burns became uneasy and fidgeted in his seat. Quelch went on to parody Burns’s rhetorical style and to quote some of Burns’s own robustious periods against him in the burlesque vein. Laughter began to roll out from the audience: interruptions became frequent from Burns. More ridicule, more unexpected jokes and humorous argument from Quelch. The whole Hall was now laughing in chorus, and Burns was up and down like a jack-in-the-box; the Chairman of the evening trying in vain to keep him in order. The more Quelch poked fun at him, the more furious became Burns and the more uproarious grew the laughter. At last Burns could stand it no longer. He got up, took his hat, and rushed out of the hall, damning us all roundly, while we rocked with glee. It was a most extraordinary exhibition of outraged personal arrogance I ever saw. Of course the vote went unanimously against him.
I had some strange experiences with Burns myself but nothing quite equal to this. On one occasion, however, I went to Sydney Hall, Battersea, to deliver an address on the disadvantages of compromise in the Socialist propaganda, with special reference to what happened after the great Dock Strike; when the £35,000 suddenly contributed from Australia had saved that remarkable movement from collapse. Burns and Tom Mann thought, perhaps not altogether without reason, that this speech of mine would be, in part at least, a criticism of their action, and they were resolved to oppose me. At any rate, they were both there when I entered the Hall, seated directly in front, close to the little raised platform from which I was to speak. I delivered myself of my message to the Socialists of Battersea, and Mann was the first to reply. He was, as he always has been in regard to myself, personally most courteous, and said among other things that no matter how widely we might differ or how sharply I might criticise his doings he should never forget that he owed his knowledge of Socialism to me – which is a good deal more than many who have been much more indebted to me will admit – and made a very good speech generally on the necessity of giving way and compromising at certain times, a view of the case which I think he would scarcely put now.
Mann carried the audience with him, and then Burns rose in wrath burning with zeal for my immolation and full of incendiary oratory to that end. He had not spoken two sentences before his voice gave way completely and he could not utter another word, much as he strained himself to do so. It was a very painful spectacle. I had some throat lozenges in my pocket and leaned across and offered him some. “Don’t take them, Jack, don’t take them,” cried Mrs. Burns, from which I judged the worthy lady thought I carried about the means of early dissolution for hostile speakers, in readiness for such an opportunity. Burns having thus accomplished a brilliant flash of silence, John Ward, now M.P. for Hanley, arose in his might – Ward was also a Revolutionary Socialist in those days – and laid about him with vigour, denouncing John Burns and exposing his manifold intrigues and treacheries with much gusto. It was vastly edifying at the time and is even more instructive now. Cynicism is the seamy side of enthusiasm.
At our Manchester Conference of 1887 I had another experience of master “Jack.” At that time there was an idea on the part of Burns and his friends that I stood in their way, which was scarcely possible, as my way, as it has been clearly shown, was not theirs. Nevertheless Champion and Burns having then left us to intrigue, not with the Liberals but with the Tories, the latter brought down some London delegates and assailed me quite unexpectedly with much rancour. I have always said and I repeat it to-day, after more than thirty years of public agitation and platformery, that fluent and ready speech counts for far too much in political life. Burns attacked me personally very vehemently and was, as usual, greatly applauded by his set. I don’t think any one will deny that I had already done a very great deal in the way of spreading the light by writing and organising for the movement; but, if I had not chanced to possess the faculty of quick retort as well, all this and a great deal more of unseen work might have gone for nothing. As it was, when it came to the vote, Burns was in a minority of one, only his own hand being held up in favour of his resolution.
And yet I am far from denying that the man, with all his conceit and treacherous ways, did good work in his blusterous fashion. On the whole I think he was in those days the best stump orator I ever heard; not so argumentative as Bradlaugh, but more fluent, with a finer voice and a more taking appearance. Certainly, too, a great deal more unscrupulous in making his effects. We went down one day to a meeting of the unemployed on the Embankment our platform being the pedestal of the Obelisk. Burns and a few others had lunched at our house, and Burns had enjoyed what the Americans would certainly call a “square meal,” presumably from its tendency to make the consumer round – and when we got down to the embankment seemed in particularly good fettle.
Judge, therefore, of our astonishment when the first sentences of his speech, delivered in his powerful tones, ran as follows: – “The upper classes tell us that the unemployed in our midst consist only of drunkards and loafers and wastrels, men who won’t work or who have no trade in their hands. Now here am I, a skilled engineer, belonging to the Union of my trade, and I can’t get work. I have never touched liquor in my life, I am as thrifty as any man can be who must keep his wife and himself in health. I’ll do a day’s work with any one. Yet here I stand as unemployed and as hungry as any of you, for neither bit nor sup has passed my lips” – and his voice rang down the road far beyond the crowd – “for four-and-twenty hours.” It came like a bombshell on us all, and how Champion, Jack Williams and the rest of us kept from laughter I do not know. It would have been well if Burns had confined his mendacity to a harmless “terminological inexactitude” of this sort.
It is impossible not to compare such a career as that of Williams with Burns’. There is no man in the movement at home or abroad who has done more for his class, and for the most hopeless and miserable of that class than J.E. Williams. He was a Socialist before any of us and here to-day, after forty years of continuous agitation, under most trying conditions, he remains the energetic, self-sacrificing, indefatigable agitator that he was when he began; though, except in the general progress of our ideas, he has had little indeed to encourage him in his splendid work. Even we Social Democrats ourselves scarcely appreciate Jack Williams at his real worth, or at all times fully comprehend the dignity and greatness of this indefatigable little figure. Born of the proletariat, living with the proletariat, fighting for the proletariat, suffering for the proletariat, when he too could, quite as easily as Burns, have made a good and easy position for himself by turning against the men and women from whom he sprang. It has been quite wonderful. Never an agitation, never a strike, never an open-air debate in this metropolis, nor indeed anywhere throughout the country where his service could be useful, but Jack Williams has been well to the front. Always vigorous, always cheery, always ready to do the hardest and least advertised work, Jack Williams is to me a constant cause for amazement and. admiration.
Nor let any one imagine for a moment that Williams is ignorant, or cannot hold his own with the men of the class above him. There is not a single speaker in the whole Labour Party in the House of Commons whom I would rather trust than John Williams to uphold the cause of Socialism before an educated audience as a representative of his class. More than a quarter of a century ago Mr. Arnold White, now “Vanoc” of the Referee, challenged the Social-Democratic Federation to debate Socialism with him, or the Social-Democratic Federation challenged Mr. Arnold White, I forget which. In any case an arrangement was come to by which a set debate was to be held in the Hall attached to the Rev. G.S. Reaney’s Congregational Church at the East End. Williams spoke first and when, during Mr. Arnold White’s reply, I saw he was taking no notes at all I sent him a slip of paper begging him to do so; he read it through and merely shook his head. Yet when it came to his turn to answer he never missed a point, and Mr. White himself generously admitted afterwards that not only was he amazed at the extent of Williams’s knowledge and his readiness, but that he considered our little champion got the best of it. That was the general opinion. When I reflect upon the hard exhausting work that Jack Williams has done since then, for practically no remuneration, though he had only to trim a little in order to be well paid, I take off my hat to him as one of the noblest men who ever fought under the Red Flag.
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Last updated on 30.7.2006