Functional socialism

12 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

Yet I gladly affirm my confidence in their goodwill and good-faith. Even if they are in Parliament because they like it, getting there to achieve a legitimate and honourable ambition, theirs is not the primrose path. Never can it be said that they are sinning against the light. The tragedy of it is that they walk in darkness. They have absorbed the parliamentary belief that the House of Commons must not only be omnipotent but universally intrusive—its fingers in every pie, its nose in everything. Thus, to our Labour leaders, to separate economics from politics is anathema, a grave derogation of the Commons’ rights. Centuries of parliamentary habit and custom are in their bones. That a new world waits fulfilment, a world calling for functional devolution, seems to them a challenge to their ancient rights, if not indeed a revolt against Providence. It is this ingrained reverence for Parliament that has thrown back Labour upon an obsolete Liberalism, urging it at all costs to contain industrial legislation within the existing parliamentary framework. Nevertheless, Labour must learn the lesson of functional devolution. It is the bare truth, easily demonstrated, that unless it quickly understands the implications of the approaching era of functionunderstands and acts upon that knowledge—its days, even as a political force, are numbered.

This coming year brings to me an ominous daythe fiftieth anniversary of my Socialist activities. In 1887, a youth of 17, 1 mounted a chair at a street