'ttbe jfabfan 1Electfon manifesto. 


1892. 


In a few weeks-perhaps in a few days-from the publication 

f this Manifesto, there will be a General Election, the result of 
which will depend on the votes of the Working Classes; and yet the 
Working Classes will have no political party of their own to vote for. 
They will be invited to choose between the Conservatives, led byLord Salisbury, and the Liberals, led by Mr. Gladstone. 

W hat the Conservatives have done. 

The Conservative party is avowedly the party of privilege and 
monopoly. It has been in power for the last six years; and 
during ~hat period it has suppressed popular rights in Ireland, and 
attacked them in England, using the armed forces at its disposalagainst the rights of Free Speech and Public Meeting as willingly in 
Trafalgar Square as at Mitchelstown, whenever the interes~s of the 
landlords were at stake. In the numerous disputes between Capital 
and Labor during its period of office, it has sanctioned State interference 
only when the blackleg needed protection against the Trade 
Unionist. Although the administration of the criminal law has been 
biassed against the poor to a scandalous degree, the Government has 
only interfered to show extra favor to the rich. The infamous Game 
Laws have been mercilessly enforced ; Labor leaders of unimpeachable 
personal character have been charged with intimidation and 
imprisoned; several working men and two working women have 
been arrested for exercising the right of Free Speech in London ; no 
redress has been given in cases where the Government, in spite of the 
most vindictive efforts to blacken the characters of its victims, has 
been compelled by public indignation to beat a retreat; and ferocious 
sentences of penal servitude have been dealt out to poor offenders 
for tritling thefts, whilst rich criminals, convicted of robbery and manslaughter 
committed under circumstances which placed them beyondall excuse, have been treated with conspicuous humanity. All 
attempts to deal with the Land Question have had for their objectthe strengthening of the land monopoly by the creation of a host 
of petty landlords ; there has been no extension of the Franchise or 
alteration of those Registration clauses which deprive one-third of 
our workers of the votes to which they are entitled under the Reform 
Act of 1884; the Local Governmf)nt Act was drawn so as to preventthe agricultural laborers from exercising any real control over the 
County Councils; the County Franchise was withheld from the 
lodgers, who have voted in parliamentary elections since 1867 ; 


the County Council of London, the capital city of England and 
the world, was denied an ordinary municipal borough's powers of 
local self-government, lest the monopoly of the ground landlords, 
which costs the Working Classes £16,000,000 a year, should be 
interfered with ; and the privileges of the Church and the House 
of Lords, the Septennial Act, the denial of payment to Members of 
Parliament, which, with the system of throwing all election 
expenses on the private means of candidates, excludes poor men 
from the House of Commons, have all been maintained by the 
Government. Clearly a party of which this can be said, is no 
friend to the Working Classes. 

What the Liberals have done. 

But when we turn to the Liberals, we find that though they have 
had the great advantage of being in opposition, and therefore of beingable to proclaim much more advanced Radical views than theywould have ventured upon when in office and liable to be called 
upon to make good their words by legislation, they have repeatedly 
shewn themselves to be at bottom no more on the 
side of the Working Classes than their opponents. They have 
made the most desperate efforts to stifle English questions by 
an agitation about Irish grievances, the insincerity of which was 
sufficiently proved by the fact that when the Government tried its 
Mitchelstown tactics at Trafalgar Square in 1887, the Liberal partypractically abandoned the London working men to their fate, and 
Mr. Gladstone actually complimented "our excellent police." In 
the slums of English towns in 1886, distress was as acute, and 
evictions for non-payment of rent as frequent and as cruel as in 
Ireland; but the official Liberals persistently ignored the condition 
of the English workers, from whose labor their own rents and 
dividends were drawn, and clamored solely about the exactions of 

Lord Clanricarde, who was doing no more in Ireland than 

landlords do in England with the full support of the Liberal 

party. The opposition of the Liberals to the Irish Land Purchase 

scheme was purely factious, since, far from wishing to prevent the 

land from slipping away from the Irish nation into the hands of the 

farmers, they had actually tried to pass a similar Land Purchase 

Bill themselves during their last term of office. When at last the 

vigorous agitation of the Socialists and Radicals forced them to add 

some Working Class measures to their program (which was, in 1887, 

actually less advanced than the Conservative program),* they

refused to adopt the vitally important measure of Payment of 

Members, and then, when they were again forced forward, prevari


cated grossly on the subject by declaring that they "recognized the 

principle" of such payment. Under the pretext of remedying the 

grievances of London leaseholders, they supported the Leaseholds 

Enfranchisement Bill, a fraudulent measure which would not have 

benefited any leaseholder with a shorter tenure than twenty years,

and the result of which would be to turn the richer leaseholders into 

• See Fabian Tract, No. u, u The Workers' Political Programme." 

3 

ground landlords, and so strengthen the voting power which supports 
the odious monopoly of land in London. Of late, in spite of the 
approach of the General Election, the Liberals have fallen so far 
out of touch with the Working Class that they have gone from bad 
to worse in the House of Commons. Their servility to Mr. 
Gladstone, whose opinions on every other question than that of 
Home Rule are those of an exceptionally prejudiced Tory, is probably 
more affected than real, and is only due to the fact that his 
personal popularity is the sole asset in their political bankruptcy.
But their recent failure to rally as a party against the SeptennialAct, when Sir W. Foster's Resolution offered them the opportunity, 
or in favor of Payment of Members on Mr. Fenwick's motion; 
above all, their treacherous desertion, at Mr. Gladstone's bidding, of 
the station master who was dismissed by the directors of the North 
Cambrian Rail way for giving evidence before the Labor Commission : 
these public acts must have convinced every politically active working 
man who is not a mere fanatical Gladstonian, that the Liberals 
who are now begging for his vote are no more representatives of the 
Labor interest than the Conservatives who are bidding against them. 

The Conspiracy of Hypocrisy. 

In both parties alike, the conspiracy of silence on the fundamental 
question of how to alter our outrageously unjust system of 
distributing the wealth of the country, has remained unbroken. 
During the present Government's term of office, there have been 
constant complaints as to the extravagance of public expenditure. 
We have had clamour in the name of the ratepayers against spending 
the paHriest sums on pianofortes for Board Schools, and in the 
name of the taxpayers against every new ironclad. Meanwhile, 
nearly three thousand million pounds sterling have been wasted 
on the propertied classes in rent and in that particular form of 
interest which costs its recipient no more labor than the cashingof a dividend warrant or the cutting off of a coupon. Out of 
this legalized plunder probably a thousand millions has been 
capitalized by the " abstinence" of the plunderers so as to increase 
the tax on future labor : the rest has been squandered in the endowment 
of idleness. Yet both Liberals and Conservatives agree 
that whatever other expenditure we can retrench in or dispense with, 
this endowment must be left untouched. They are willing to economise 
in the army, the navy, the schools, the housing of the poor,
sanitation, smoke prevention, river embankments, harbors, in anything 
and everything that is of national importance, sooner than 
touch one penny of the unearned incomes of the idle rich, or even 
take the simplest step to forestall their increas~. Every budget is 
drawn up on the principle that all devices for screwing the revenue 
out of the poor must be exhausted before the idle rich are touched. 
The country postman has to walk excessive distances for miserable 
wages in order that the profit on the Post Office may be filched from 
the employees and from the public by the Chancellor of the Exchequer 


in order to keep down the Income Tax; and with the same object 
taxes on the food of the people are maintained in defiance of everysound canon of political economy and common sense. Ministers are 
ready to moralize on every subject but this authorised spoliation of 
the industrious by the idle; to point out every social evil except 
this root of all the social evils; to insist on every reform except its 
reform. Whenever they allude to it, they imply that it does not 
exist; that the class which lives on rent and dividends, and spendsthem in the manner revealed by the Tranby Croft gambling case, 
is an industrious and deserving class; that the poor are poor because 
of their improvidence and vice; and that all assertions to the contrary 
are direct incitements to Anarchy. During the recent trial 
of Ravachol in Paris, the Press advertised the exploits and spreadthe arguments of the assassin and dynamiter throughout Europewithout an attempt to controvert them, beca,use it would have been 
impossible to do so without calling attention to the social injusti.ces 
which he made the excuse for his crimes. 

The Policy of the Working Class. 

Yet throughout this huge conspiracy of Silence, or rather of 
Hypocrisy, it is perfectly well known on both sides that the WorkingClasses have only one possible program, which may be summed up as 
the Disestablishment and Disendowment of Idleness. They have left 
Utopian Socialism and Sentimental Republicanism far behind them; 
and though the belated literary-man-turned-politician of the middle 
class imagines that the Labor agitator is still a dreamer of dreams, 
the agitators and their audiences have never been more out of 
patience with both dreams and party shibboleths than at present.
Their objects and methods are plain to all except those who have not 
the wit, ·or perhaps the will, to see them. They intend to bring the 
representative governing bodies, local as well as parliamentary, under 
genuine popular control by Payment of all Members and Election 
Expenses, Second Ballot, and more frequent elections. The powersthus obtained will be used to relieve the land and industry of the 
country from the control of idlers by gradually transferring it 
to local governing bodies under all the usual forms of sale-andpurchase 
or compensation, the final act of expropriation at each stepbeing the raising of the purchase money or compensation by deliber


ate taxation of those unearned incomes which at present amount, 

as the Income Tax returns shew, to the monstrous sum of Five 

Hundred Million pounds sterling a year. This program of Municipal 

Socialism and Radical Finance is the only one upon which a Labor 

Party can be organized; and the common pretence that the friends 

of Labor are not Socialists, and that their financial schemes go no 

further than the old Whig cry for the conversion of indirect into 

direct taxation, is only part of the Conspiracy of Hypocrisy. If the 

Working Classes spend much less time than they used to in 

attacking the open venality of the Established Church, or the 

detested hereditary privileges of the House of Lords and the Crown, 


5 

it is because they have learned from the experience oi the United 
States, where these abuses do not exist, that the true masters of 
a nation are not the Kings, Peers, and Bishops, but those who own 
its land and capital and control its industrial organization. The 
battle is now pitched between the present owners and the workers, 
who are bent on wresting their privileges from them. How, then, 
can the Working Classes be represented by a House of Commons 
consisting of men who could not afford to sit there if they were not 
landlords, capitalists, or, at best, professional men depending for 
their means and position on the patronage of landlords and capitalists?
Naturally, the moment a Bill or Resolution in Parliament raises the 
vital issue of Property versus Labor, the members rally overwhelmingly 
in defence of Property, whether they are Conservatives, Tory 
Democrats, Whigs," New Liberals," or Philosophic Radicals. When 
the workers asked, a few months ago, that a little more of the wealth 
of London should be spent on the Board Schools and a little less on 
the ground landlords, Mr. Labouchere the Republican rushed at once 
to the side of the Duke of Westminster; and Mr. Balfour has no 
stauncher ally than Mr. John Morley in his opposition to the enforcement 
by the State of an eight hours limit to the working day. 

The Tyranny of our Party System. 

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that we hear 
from all quarters a demand for a new party devoted singly to the 
interests of Labor. Unfortunately, the difficulties which hamperthe beginnings of a third political party in England can only be 
appreciated by those who have learnt them from practical electioneering 
experience. By our method of deciding parliamentaryelections, the seat is given to the candidate who obtains the highestnumber of votes at the first ballot, although double as many may be 
divided among his competitors; so that the majority in the House 
of Commons may easily represent a minority of tlre nation. It 
therefore becomes of the utmost consequence to the majority in anyconstituency that its vote should not be "split" : that is, divided 
between two or more rival candidates on the same. side. Conses_
uently, if a third candidate comes forward in a one-member constituency 
he is at once accused of a treacherous design to split the vote 
in the interests of the party which he professes to oppose; and ha 
is boycotted at the polls by all who are sufficiently experienced and 
disciplined in politics to understand that nothing but a solid party 
vote can win a closely contested election. This state of things,
whilst it is fatal to Independent candidates, suits the two established 
political parties so well that they both, when in office, ignore the 
demand of the advanced sections for the introduction of the Continental 
system of Second Ballot, which secures the final victory at 
the polls to the majority, whether the vote has been split at the 
first ballot or not. Pending the introduction of this reform, the 
tyranny of our party system is complete. This was strikingly shewn 
at the recent elections for the London County Council, where the 


necessity for presenting a united front to the enemy compelled the 
voters to boycott all the Independent candidates without regard to 
their programs or past services. 

The practical conclusion is that until we get Second Ballot all 
candidates who are not the nominees of an organized party may be 
left out of account; and it is waste of time and of votes to put them 
forward except when the object is, not to win the seat, but either 
to advertise their opinions or to defeat some other candidate bysplitting the vote of his side. When a candidate is run to win, he 
must come forward either as the nominee of one of the two 
established parties, or as the nominee of a new and advanced pa.rty 
which has made sufficient headway in the constituency to have 
disestablished and taken the place of the Liberal party in local 
politics. 

Political Apathy of the Workers. • 

At present there are unfortunately very few constituencies in 
which the Working Classes are politically organized enough to take 
the overwhelming lead in politics which their superiority in numbers 
has placed within their reach. In Battersea the Working Classes, led 
by John Burns, have extinguished all opposition; but this striking 
success unfortunately proves nothing, since the chief factor in it was 
the exceptional ability of the candidate, whose name was made known 
throughout the world by the dock strike of 1889. So long as the 
Working Classes need an extraordinary candidate, popularized by an 
extraordinary event, to rouse them to do what the rich classes will 
do as a matter of course for an ordinary candidate without anyrousing at all, so long will successful political organization of the 
Working Classes be confined to one constituency in every hundred; 
and so long, too, will their representatives be hopelessly outvoted bythe representatives of the rich on every governing body in the 
country. 

Forcing the Hand of the Liberals. 

For the present therefore, advanced politicians are mostly driven 
to depend, not on the support of separate organizations devoted to 
the interests of Labor alone, but on their chances of forcing the Liberal 
Associations to accept strong Radicals and Socialists as their 
party candidates. There is of course no difficulty in doing this in 
constituencies in which the Liberals have no chance of beating the 
Conservatives. The Liberal party, loud in its professions that 
Labor should be represented by a due proportion of working 
men in Parliament (say 10 out of 670), now takes care at 
every election to offer a certain number of safe Tory seats to 
Labor Candidates. At this election, for instance, the utmost' 
the Liberals can hope for is to be as successful as they were in 
1885 ; and it will accordingly be found that all the new Labor 
candidates who are wholly dependent on official support from 


7 

the Liberal party, are contesting seats which were won by the Conservatives 
in 1885, and will therefore, in all probability, be won bythem again in 1892. But notwithstanding that the friendliness of 
the Liberals in such cases is an obvious sham, the opportunities it 
provides are not to be despised, because there are many constituencies 
in which the Working Classes, though they will vote for a Conservative 
against a Liberal, will vote for a good Labor candidate 
against a Conservative if they get the chance. Therefore, however 
clear it may be to a Labor candidate, when the Liberals offer him a 
constituency to contest, that they have selected it for him because 
they dQ not believe he can possibly win it, he should take the offer if 
he can find no better opening, and try whether he cannot beat the 
Conservative by throwing over mere Liberalism and trying conclusions 
with him on a thoroughgoing Labor program.

In cases where the Liberals stand to win at the election, it will 
be found that the difficulty of forcing them to adopt advanced 
candidates will be great in proportion to the certainty of the Conservatives 
being defeated. The Labor section must therefore 
threaten that if too backward a candidate is accepted, the WorkingClasses will either abstain from voting in disgust or else split their 
vote between the Liberal and some Independent Labor candidate, 
with the result, both ways, of letting the Conservative win the seat. 
But this threat can only be brought home by the Socialists and 
Radicals themselves joining the Liberal Associations and gettingtheir best men elected to the executive committees. Any earnest 
politician can do this, as a rule, by merely signifying his 
willingness to serve, since the extreme scarcity of recruits for active 
service ensures a welcome to all. This scarcity is one of the most 
discouraging features of political life. The utmost that can be done 
with the great mass of Englishmen at present is to induce some two 
thirds of them to claim and use their votes. Not more than fifty in 
a constituency will take the trouble to attend a ward meeting of the 
local political association once or twice a year ; and as for the 
handful of men who, as-members of the executive committee, form 
the real caucus, capable candidates for it are always at a premium.
The immense effect which the Socialists, though they are a mere 
stage army, have been able to produce in politics, can only be understood 
by those who are behind the scenes sufficiently to know that 
all political bodies in England are stage armies too, and that the 
Socialists far outstrip the caucuses in activity, in initiative, in 
personal devotion, and consequently in the circulation of propagandistliterature and the regular maintenance of public free meetings for 
the statement and discussion of political principles. The result is 
that the only systematic political education within the reach of 
young working men and women is a socialistic education . 

. 

How the Liberals Checkmate the Labor Men. 

It might seem from the foregoing that the swamping of the 
backward or Whig element in the caucuses by an influx of Socialist!:! 


and Radicals ought to be the easiest thing in the world. N evertheless, 
the moment it is carried beyond a certain point, it is effectively 
checked by the bankruptcy of the swamped caucus. Political 
operations cost money ; and whereas there is always sufficient to be 

had from a few rich Liberal subscribers in the district or from headquarters 
as long as the caucus jogs along quietly in the old Liberal 
rut, the moment it moves too fast the supplies are cut off; and the 
Working Class cannot be depended on to make up the deficiency.
In a swamped caucus the whole question is how far the majorityof Socialists and Radicals can push the minority of Whigs who 
hold the purse strings. When the all-important moment comes 
for selecting the party candidate, the Whigs, backed by the official 
leaders of the Liberal party, try to get a Whig accepted; whilst the 
Radicals try to get a Socialist. Usually neither one side nor the 
other has its way completely. The Whigs have to put up with a 
candidate too advanced for their liking; and the Radicals have to 
be content with one who is not advanced enough. Such a result is 
not much to boast of ; but it is the best that can be achieved by the 
friends of Labor where there is no organized Labor party strongenough to drive the caucuses out of the field. And even this, if it is 
to be done at all, must be done before the candidate is selected, and 
not left until election time. However weak an accepted party candidate 
may be, any proposal to change him for a better one on the 
eve of an election is almost certain to be rejected, even by men of 
advanced opinions, with a remark as to the folly of swapping horses 
when crossing a stream. All Radicals and Socialisto are therefore 
urgently reminded that if they have not already done their utmost 
to secure the selection of advanced candidates or to compel bad ones 
to withdraw and make room for better, there is not a moment to be 
lost. Indeed it is too late now to interfere in cases where the party 
arrangements are already completed on even a moderately satisfactory 
Radical basis. But something may still be done in cases 
where no candidate has yet been found, or where the caucus has 
selected one who is, from the Working Class point of view, every 
whit as bad as his opponent. 

Need for an Independent Labor Party. 

It will now be seen that the process of swamping the Liberal 
Associations with Socialists and Radicals, though it can, when 
adroitly managed, considerably quicken the pace of political reform, 
is yet but a paltry substitute for the straightforward action of a 
genuine Working Class party, supported by Working Class subscriptions 
and completely independent of both Liberal and Conservative 
aid. The fact that no such party exists is disgraceful to theWor king 
Classes. A subscription of only three half-pence a year from every 
male worker in the kingdom would bring in a parliamentary fund of 
£50,000 a year. If the wage workers of both sexes and of all ages 
subscribed one penny a year each, the result would be an annual fund 
of nearly £60,000. If we confine ourselves to that section of the 


9 

Working Class which has been organized and brought under discipline 
by Trade Unions, taking no account of what is called the 
New Unionism, and counting only those comparatively stable 
Societies which held their own through the bad times which 
preceded the revival of trade at the end of 1887, we find that the 
members could have maintained a parliamentary fund of £130,000 a 
year by paying a penny a week per member. The bricklayers, who 
have just decided to vote £3 a week from the funds of their Trade 
Union to maintain their representative in the London CountyCouncil, might do as much for a delegate of their own in the 
House of Commons; and the four Unions of Railway Wmkers 
could at least support one member in Parliament, even if they had 
to do it by a special levy. The poverty of the workers is therefore 
no excuse for their slavish political apathy. They make greatersacrifices to support legions of publicans and sporting bookmakers 
than free political institutions would cost them ; and there is no 
escaping the inference that they care more for drinking and gamblingthan for freedom. The same workman who pleads want of education 
and opportunity as an excuse for not understanding party politics is 
at no loss when the subject is football, or racing, or pigeon-flying, or 
any subject, however complicated, that he really wants to understand. 
Under such circumstances it is useless to discuss what a 
Labor party might do at the election now upon us. There is no Labor 
party; and there is no possibility of forming one in time for the 
dissolution. It is true that in every constituency plenty of men will 
applaud any orator who advocates a Labor party. But the Labor candidate 
who depends on themfor his election expenses or for two pounds 
a week to support him whilst he is working for them on the CountyCouncil or in Parliament, soon finds that it is one thing to make 
people shout and another to make them pay. As for Labor Associations 
sufficiently numerous and powerful to make the voters feel that 
all Progressive votes not given to the Labor candidate would be 
wasted, there are not a dozen such bodies in England, even if we 
include the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress,
the representatives of which usually vote as the Liberal whips direct 
on all occasions in Parliament except when the regulation of 
factories and mines, or the liability of employers for accidents to 
their employees, come up for settlement. It cannot be too emphatically 
repeated here that the exceptional cases of the organization of 
the Working Class vote in Battersea by John Burns, and in Northampton 
by the late Charles Bradlaugh, only prove what can be done 
under special circumstances. The test of the political capacity of a 
class is shewn by its power to make the most of ordinary circumstances 
; and under ordinary circumstances the Working Class does 
nothing at all, whereas the upper and middle classes organize their 
forces and put forward and support their candidates just as regularly 
in the most obscure constituencies as they do in Midlothian, where 
they have Mr. Gladstone to rouse them to enthusiasm. It is easy 
to account for this state of things by pointing out that the povertyand drudgery in which the workers are plunged leaves them no 


means and no energy to spare for political work. But to account 
for facts is not to alter them; and poverty or no poverty, drudgery 
or no drudgery, the workers must make up their minds that no power 
on earth can make free men and women of people who will not 
spend a shilling a year on their political business. During the present 
year the workers of London suffered themselves to be shamefully 
defeated at the School Board election because not more than one in 
four of them would take the pains to walk to the polling station on 


a rainy evening. Gentlemen who 1: ... ~ openly sneered at the 
children of the working classes as "gutter children" were returned 
at the top of the poll in constituencies where excellent Labor 
candidates were defeated; and the Board Schools of the capital will 
consequently remain for the next two years in the hands of the partywhich, under cover of sparing the rates, ran in the interests of the 
ground landlords as against those of the children. Later on, the 
defeat was supposed to be redeemed by a great triumph for the 
Working Classes at the County Council Election. The Fa.bian 
Society admittedly contributed largely to that success by collectingall the facts and figures relating to the great London monopolies, and 
printing and distributing over 500,000 leaflets, besides organizing 
and delivering several courses of lectures in all parts of London 
before the election. But the Working Classes did not pay for the 
leaflets orfor the lecturss. Everything had to be" free," which means 
that the 470 members of the London Fabian Society had to find the 
time and money; and the Society would be hopelessly bankrupt at this 
moment in consequence but for the liberality of a few comparatively 
rich friends who came to the res·~ue. The same story can be told bythe other bodies, Socialist and Radical, which helped to organize the 
victory. The ordinary working man seemed to take it quite as a matter 
of course that all this trouble and expense should be incurred for his 
sake by somebody else, and to feel that he had shewn sufficient public 
spirit in listening to the canvasser's instructions instead of turninghim out of the house as an intruder. In the face of these facts the 
Fabian Society, though convinced of the need of a new political partydevoted solely to the interests of the Working Class, would be trifling 
with the public if it pretended that there was any such thing yet in 
existence as a Labor Party, or that the present movement of popu-
lar feeling in that direction is worth sufficient pounds, shillings, 
pence and votes, to run twenty genuine Labor candidates without 
middle-class support successfully at the forthcoming election. 
Test Questions Impracticable. 
In short, then, since the election must be fought without a 
general organization, or a general fund, or the guidance of official 
leaders, it must also be fought without general orders. It is not 
desirable that any item in the Labor program should be made a 
test question at the poll. All that can be said is that the most 
immediately important measure is a Reform Bill providing for 
Payment of all Members and Election Expenses out of public funds, 

11 

Second Ballot, and Shorter Parliaments. As a rule, a candidate who 
has not got as far as this is not worth the trouble of voting for by a 
working man, except to keep a worse candidate out. Yet if a 
conscientious candidate, sound on all other points, objected, and 
were opposed by a candidate who was sound on that point alone, it 
would be absurd to give the latter the preference. Now if Payment 
of Members cannot be made a test question, nothing can. It has 
been suggested that two or three questions should be grouped 
together as a Minimum Program, and that no candidate be 
supported who will not pledge himself to it. But no program of the 
kind can be devised for the whole country. A minimum that 
would be too much for a backward constituency would be too little 
for an advanced one. The political situation is not the same in anytwo electoral divisions; and the friends of Labor in each place can 
only make the most of the local situation, whatever it is. Besides, 
there is the general objection to minimum programs that they tend 
to become maximum ones. The minimum, though put forward as 
the least that the Working Class voter will put up with, is taken as 
being the most he ventures to expect. Another objection to a 
minimum program is that in cases where neither of the candidates 
will accept it, it gives working men an excuse for not voting at all, 
which is almost always the very worst course they can take. It is 
easy to say that neither candidate is worth .voting for; but those 
who are fondest of saying this should be the first to admit that 
there is generally a candidate that is worth voting against. 

Candidates' Pledges and their Value. 

Since there will be but few Labor candidates at the General 
Election, and since, in their absence, working men cannot be recommended 
to abstain from voting, it will be necessary in most cases 
to vote for the better of the two party candidates put into the :field 
by the followers of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury. In exactingpledge!' from these candidates, it must be borne in mind that such 
pledges are of little practical value, because it is only the Cabinet 
which has any real power to introduce and pass Bills in the House 
of Commons. A candidate may therefore pledge himself to supportall sorts of extreme reforms with the full certainty that not one of them 
will come before the House until it is taken up by the Government. 
Therefore to vote for the candidate who gives the most and the 
readiest pledges would put a premium on mere unscrupulousness,
since there is nothing to prevent a dishonest candidate from promising 
anything and everything that will win votes for him. All partycandidates must therefore be judged by their personal characters and 
past records; and those who have nothing to offer but pledgesshould be sharply reminded that the only pledges worth having are 
the pledges of their official leaders, who will constitute the Cabinet 
if their party gains a majority. It is customary before every General 
Election for the chief of each party, by a speech or a published letter 
to one of his colleagues, to make a statement of the measures he 


intends to introduce if the country declares in his favour; and this 
statement constitutes the real program of his party. Their other 
programs, including those of the National Liberal Federation and 
the National Union of Conservative Associations, are worthless. 
The Liberal progra,m at the next election, for instance, will not be 
the Newcastle program, but only just so much of it as Mr. Gladstone 
can be forced to promise explicitly to carry out by the WorkingClasses threatening to vote against him, or to run Labor candidates 
in defiance of the danger of splitting the vote. Such threats 
must be addressed throughout the country to the different candidates, 
who, when they find that their own pledges are unavailing, 
will transfer pressure to head-quarters. Nevertheless it is 
necessary to insist on the candidates pledging themselves as 
well; and such pledges should be obtained by sending in a 
series of questions on the Labor program to the candidate, and 
asking for a written reply. If any candidate seeks to evade the 
questions by declarations of unbounded devotion to the Throne and 
Constitution on the one hand, or to his Grand Old Leader on the 
other, it will generally prove wise to vote for his opponent. 

Qualifications of Labor Candidates. 

Labor candidates should be run in all cases where there is (1)
a chance of winning the seat ; or (2) some reasonable likelihood of the 
Labor poll proving large enough to make the Labor cause respected 
in the constituency, in which case there should be no hesitation about 
splitting the vote; or (3) where the Liberal and Conservative candidates 
are equally backward on Labor questions, and the result of 
the ordinary party contest is therefore quite indifferent to theWor king 
Class. But all these three cases are subject to the condition that the 
Labor candidate shall be a man of unquestionable honesty, so that the 
cause of Labor may never be discredited by him, and a man of fair 
capacity, so that he may never make it ridiculous. A Conservative 
or Liberal candidate need not be a person of any particular ability.
If he holds his tongue and obeys the party whip, he cannot damagehimself or his side. But every Labor member in the next parliament, 
and every Labor candidate on the platform at the election, 
will have frequently to act on his own judgment; and anymistake he makes will be pounced upon as a proof of the inferiorityof Labor members in general. Beyond the two indispensable pointsof honesty and ability, it is not possible to lay down any set of 
qualifications as necessary for Labor candidates. But it is certainlydesirable that such candidates should be members of the vast class 
of men and women who work for weekly wages. All ordinary 
men vote with their own class; and though it is true that there 
are members of the middle and upper classes whose devotion to the 
cause of the people is beyond all question, yet they are exceptions 
to the rule ; and it is only by exception that they should be selected 
as candidates. If the working class shew any preference for middle 
class men, they will soon find their parliamentary forces swamped 


13 


by ambitious young lawyers and journalists who have no other 
way of compelling the political parties to recognize their talents 
than by making themselves famous on the Radical, Republican, 
or Socialist platform. The late Lord Beaconsfield beganhis career in this fashion, which is the only one open to men who 
have political talent without social influence. It is unnecessary to 
name living examples, as no observant citizen will be at any loss to 
point out gentlemen of Cabinet rank in Parliament who first made 
a noise in the world by professing extreme views to which theynever now allude. A really able professional man, when once his 
reputation is made, can only remain faithful to the cause of Labor byrepeatedly sacrificing his chance of worldly success ; and the workers 
have no right to demand such sacrifices, even if it were not folly to 
trust to their being made. For an able working man, on the contrary, 
a seat in Parliament is not a mere step to professionaladvancement, because he has no profession except that of serving 
his constituents, and no means except what he receives from them 
for his service. Besides, he regards his position as a promotion, and 
not as a condescension or a sacrifice.. It would of course be idle to 
deny that the ablest working man who comes straight from the 
factory or mine into Parliament has a good deal to learn which the 
middle class employers who share the benches with him have learnt 
already from their experience in the management of commercial 
business ; but on the other hand a working man is more likely to 
learn business than a middle class man is to unlearn his class prejudices. 
To all of which it must be added that the effect on the 
public mind of the return of a working man to Parliament is far 
greater than that of the return of even the most advanced revolutionist 
from the ruling classes. The Fabian Society therefore, 
whilst urging the workers to get the best candidates they can without 
drawing any hard and fast line, strongly urges the selection of 
working men as candidates in all constituencies where there is an 
independent Labor party, the necessary precaution being taken, 
in all cases, of keeping the subscriptions under the control of a 
responsible committee, so that subscribers may be guaranteed as far 

as possible against candidates who ask for subscriptions and then 
withdraw, leaving the friends of Labor disgusted at the waste of 
their money. It is necessary to repeat here that an independentLabor party means a Labor organization so powerful as to be able 
to carry its candidates without Liberal or Conservative support. It 
does not mean merely a Society which is in favor of an independentLabor party, though such Societies may do good work in hecklingcandidates and keeping up the political pace, especially if two 
or more in the same constituency combine their forces for the 
election. Middle class candidates, however advanced, should 
be reserved for constituencies where the seat cannot be won without 
some middle class support.. Nobody need have the slightest fear of 
seeing too many working men in the Parliament. It is only too 
certain that there will not be enough to satisfy even the most Conservative 
of Conservative working men. 


Always Vote, Labor Candidate or No Labor 
Candidate. 

In cases where no Labor candidate can be run, there must be no 
hesitation on the part of the workers in securing the success of the 
best candidate in the field, or, if all the candidates are bad, in at least 
securing the defeat of the worst. The only thing that is quite certain 
to happen at the Election is the utter defeat of any unorganized section 
which sulks and declares that if it cannot have exactly the sort of 
candidate it wants it will not vote at all. Politicians who sulk 
generally excuse themselves by saying that if they were to support anycandidate who did not accept their whole program, they would be 
"compromising their principles" ; and such Pharisaic excuses are 
always popular in England, partly because we are too fond of cant 
of all kinds, and partly because but few of us have any practicalknowledge of the working of the party system under our First Ballot 
method of election, or of the skill and generalship needed to fightpolitical battles when the result of a General Election may cost the 
propertied classes millions by its effect on subsequent taxation. 
Every working man must try to get as much of the Labor program 
as he possibly can staked in his constituency at the election; but if 
he only succeeds in getting half-an-inch of it staked, he must vote 
and agitate for that half inch as resolutely as if it were the whole. 
The propertied classes are retreating before the laboring classes ; but 
the retreat is not a rout: they are yielding step by step, and dis-I puting every step with all their might. Every election in which a 
I more progressive candidate defeats a less progressive or a reactionaryone is a step gained; and the man who does not see that it is better 
worth while to gain a step than lose one is a hindrance instead of a 
help to the Labor side, however sincere his impatience may be. 
Every advantage is worth securing. The more advanced the Conservative 
party is, the more it will force the pace of the Liberal 
party. And if the Liberal party obtains a majority at the General 
Election, much will depend on the sort of men who composethat majority. If they are a flock of subservient Gladstonians to 
whom the Newcastle program is nothing but a trap to catch 
Working Class votes in, then the great disappointment of 1880 
will be repeated; and we shall again find out how little there is to 
choose between Whig capitalists and Tory ones. If, on the 
contrary, they are stiffened by a sturdy contingent of Socialists 
and Radicals who thoroughly understand that Mr. Gladstone is a 
strong Conservative on every subject except Home Rule, some progress 
may be made in spite of his efforts to head them back. Before 
long, no doubt, the merging of the Liberal party, properly so called, 
with the Conservative party, will be completed. Mr. Goschen, Mr. 
Chamberlain and Lord Hartington have already followed John 
Bright into the Conservative camp ; and they will be joined there 
before long by Sir William Harcourt, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Labouchere 
and other gentlemen who are now nearly a.s popular with 
the Radicals as Mr. Chamberlain was after his" ransom" speech at 


15 

the theatre in Waterloo Road in 1885, or John Bright at the HydePark demonstration against the House of Lords in 1884. Time has 
proved that the Socialists were right then in maintaining that these 
gentlemen belonged at heart to the great Capitalist party. That is 
Mr. Gladstone's party as much as it is Lord Salisbury's; Mr. 
Morley's as much as it is Mr. Balfour's; Sir William Harcourt's as 
much as it is Mr. Goschen's. Nothing is to be won for Labor bytrusting to them ; but something may be wrung from them whilst 
they are still divided, by playing on their rivalries to tempt them 
to outbid one another for the Labor vote, and by taking advantage 
of their self-complacent ignorance of the Labor Question to induce 
them to pass measures of which they do not understand the nature 
or forsee the consequences. At the same time they must be 
dealt with without any useless and inconsiderate bitterness. These 
gentlemen follow their class bias even to the extent of breaking all 
the party ties which have bound them in the past; and no reasonable 
opponent will reproach them for doing so. It is their fidelity 
to their own class which leads them to close up their ranks against 
the Working Class. It is easy to hound on discontented workers to 
rail at them for it. But the wise course is to follow their example 
on our own side. When Mr. Goschen had to choose between the 
interest of his class and his allegiance to Mr. Gladstone, he did not 
hesitate to throw over Mr. Gladstone. How soon are our older 
Radical leaders going to imitate Mr. Goschen's devotion? 

This is All. 

This is all the Fabian Society, or any Society, can honestly say 
to the Working Classes on the forthcoming election. It amounts to 
little more than looking unpleasant facts in the face and consideringhow to make the best of them. The Society, like other Societies of 
the same kind, has done what it could during the term of the expiring 
parliament to make the facts pleasanter ; but the little handfuls 
of men who are here and there devoting themselves to the 
political interests of Labor, cannot change the condition of fourteen 
million wage workers who will do practically nothing for themselves. 
Slavery is popular in England provided the wages are regular : 
Socialism is only applauded when its propagandists give free lectures, 
distribute free literature, and do other people's political drudgery for 
nothing. The average British working man is a political pauper : 
he will neither do his own political work, nor pay anyone else to do 
it for him; and the result is that he is also an economic pauper, the 
mere tool and drudge of a class which leaves no stone unturned, and 
spares no expense, to secure the control of the State for itself. 
During the next few months the working man will be flattered and 
courted by politicians of all sorts ; and when he has given his vote 
to the candidate whose flatteries please him best, and who will be 
careful to denounce our plain speaking as "an insult to the WorkingClasses of this country," he will, if the present depression of trade 
continues, soon find himself out on strike against a reduction of wage, 


and striking in vain in the face of a falling market. After that, he 
will be lucky if be does not find himself one of the unemployed, with 
no wages to strike about, high or low. Then he will learn, as he did 
in 1886 and 1887, that the remedy of his flatterers in parliament for 
starvation caused by want of employment is the policeman's bludgeon 
and the Mansion House Charitable Fund, in alternate doses. Under 
our commercial system, Trade progresses by alternate expansions and 
contractions. The capitalist must have "a reserve army" of 
unemployed always to take men from as trade expands, and to 
fling them back into as it contracts. Each wave, counting from one 
commercial crisis to the next, takes usually about ten years to complete 
itself. That means that five years of rising wages, accompanied 
by successful strikes and the formation of new Trade Unions in all 
directions, is followed by five years of falling wages, unsuccessful 
strikes, the bankruptcy and break-up of the mushroom Unions of 
the period of prosperity, and finally the multiplication of the 
unemployed and a terrible spell of hard times. Our last period 
of prosperity, it will be remembered, began at the end of 1887. It 
is nearly five years since then; and the tide is already turning. The 
hard times are coming back again. If the workers take some 
trouble to improve the House of Commons at this election, it may,
when the distress comes, set the Loca~ Government Board to work 
to stir up the Boards of Guardians and other local bodies to meet 
the emergency by employing la.bor on those public improvements for 
which there is no commercial demand, although they are needed 
everywhere for the general convenience. But if the workers leave 
the House of Commons as it is, they must put up, when the bad 
time comes, with the pawnbroker, the stoneyard, the bludgeon, and 
the beggar's dole. For the unemployed cannot be helped at the 
expense of the ordinary ratepayer, but by special taxation of th.e 
rich ; and no House of Commons in which Labor is not stronglyrepresented will touch the incomes of the rich. 

It would be idle to add another word. If the sting of present 
poverty, with the dread of worse poverty in the near future and th.e 
recollection of it in the near past cannot rouse the workers to 
action, print and paper cannot do it. Freedom will cost a struggleand sacrifice which, though too hard for a few to sustain, will be 
light enough for each when all are ready and willing to share it. The 
workers know this already : it remains now for them to act upon it. 

G. STANDRING, Printer, 7 & 9, Finsbury Street, E .C.