The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

viii FOREWORD

In fact to deal with the House of Lords as a problem of political democracy to be disposed of as the Liberals hoped to dispose of it, by curtailing the powers and restricting the functions of the non-elected chamber in all its active relations with the elected one, appears to us to be quite literally a waste of time. We contemplate without enthusiasm, indeed with positive dismay, the possibility of having to fight the next General Election or two on the question of “‘ The Peers versus the People.’’ It smells to us suspiciously like a red herring. It has nothing to do with the organisation of political democracy for economic ends.

With the author of this book, we see the modern Socialist and Trade Union movement as sharply divided into two periods which, though they overlap each other, are nevertheless clearly defined. The first period, really deriving from Chartism, is the time spent upon the conquest of political power; the second period, dating from the first decade of this century, forms a new departure, tentative, hesitating, towards the conquest of economic power. The War blurred the distinction between these periods, first emphasising the political, then stressing the economic, anon plunging the vast Labour movement into hopeless confusion. Then came the General Strike, leading to the triumph of political Labourism. In the flush of that victory the Trade Union elements in our organised Movement were driven into uneasy silence, if not into acceptance of the political