The Editorial Mill June 29, 1895.

*THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, JUNE 29, 1895.

The Editorial Mill.

Our Motto: “Socialism in our time.”

What is the true policy for any Australian Labour Party to pursue? Is it a policy of Inactivity or a policy of Fight? Should the members of a party, elected at a time when there existed the most general misapprehension regarding the aims of Labour in Politics, elected in spite of the vilest calumny on the part of a press in the hands of the banks, now make obeisance to the capitalistic parties who moved earth and prayed heaven that the Labour Party should be kept out of Parliament, or should the Labour Party fight the battles of the disinherited with the courage of men who had at heart the reforms they were sent into Parliament agitate for. For our part, if we may be allowed to interfere, being outside Parliament, and risking the sarcasm “Oh, you want our billets” --we consider the true policy of Labour members is one of Courage and Determination.

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Trimming our sails to catch every little breeze, shaping our conduct to secure every stray vote, may be all very well in a dead calm, but the present is a time of storm and tragedy for the lives of men, women and little children are being offered up at the shrine of Greed and Avarice. Now is the time to clear the decks and prepare for action. A policy of Cringe will not win one vote from the natural enemies of the people. The Government supporter who whispers in one's ear “Now I respect your moderation and think you an acquisition to the House, but think Blank's extreme policy a mistake,” never gave Labour a vote yet, never will, and will probably only accept Reform at the point of the bayonet. Any Labour man who could secure election to Parliament in the face of enormous odds after a big Australasian strike, need have no fear of his return in the future, provided of course he is as outspoken when standing under the brilliant chandelier of the Legislative Assembly as he was when standing in the street under the sickly glare of a kerosene torch.

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The big hot words poured forth from a sense of wrong and misery and from personal experience of poverty and distress should find expression from the cross-benches as well as from the cart tail. Of course we all know that a man's surroundings influence his conduct very largely, and that there is a great difference between getting up early in the morning, donning your old clayey moleskins and rough shirt and heavy boots to go into the bowels of the earth there to mine for your daily bread, and getting up at any hour in the day you choose, putting on your very best, and leisurely walking down to cushioned seats in a Parliamentary institution standing higher than the Supreme Court of the Colony, where you feel yourself the peer of the wealthy employer who at one time had the power to deprive you of the liberty of earning your daily crust. There is a great difference between laying bricks or shifting heavy sweat-compelling wool bales and handling a paper knife in the best libraries in Australasia where you have the service of paid librarians to attend to your every requirement. There is a great difference between intellectual work of the most absorbing kind and physical toil of the most monotonous and life-shortening character. We all know the temptation that besets an M.L.A. when he has tasted the pleasures of Parliament, when he sees the prospect of a good permanent salary, when he sees a wife and children round him, to ask himself - “ What is my duty to myself and my wife and children? What will the crowd do for me if I happen too win out next election?” We all know that most men would reply to their own questions: “ My duty is to myself and wife and family. The crowd can do nothing for me. They are too poor. I must so conduct myself that I shall gain credit for being an orderly and reasonable person, whose moderate views are worthy all men's respect. I must use diplomacy and tact. I must not be found opening my mouth too wide in Parliament. I must not abuse my opponents as I did on the stump. I must discourage the extreme members of our party from doing anything which the powerful daily press will designate extravagant. I can talk in favour of real reform outside Parliament where it is not likely to be reported, and I can privately express my suspicion and detestation of the capitalistic members of the House, but it won't do me any harm to make all the friends I possibly can amongst the influential and wealthy members on the Government benches. I never know when I may want their assistance.”

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We all recognise the temptation there is for a Labour man to commune with himself in the above fashion. But it is a temptation which should be resisted by the reformer. There is no occasion to distrust the crowd. The crowd often misjudge a man, and he is a great sufferer, but only for a time. They come back to him again if he remains true to them. Having misjudged him once they are more careful of wronging him in future. So long as a man does his duty by the working classes he has nothing to fear. But he must not trim. Between two stools a man may fall to the ground. Now the men, amongst labour members, who bear the best name outside Parliament, are the men who have proved themselves most obnoxious to the boodle politicians on the Government benches – the men who in season and out of season, with tact or without tact, get up in their places and bluntly challenge everything that is likely to prove to be against the interests of the masses who have so long borne the burden of all taxation. A militant policy made the Labour Parties, and the Labour Parties must be militant or they are of no use to humanity.

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In Queensland the last session has commenced; there will not be another opportunity before the next general election, and every boodle politician should be made to toe the line on all those questions which are agitating the public mind and on all those reforms which will have to be instituted before the people's distressed condition can be ameliorated. First and foremost, they who have bamboozled the people for so long, should be divided up on the question of Electoral Reform, then Black Labour, then a State Bank, then a Land and Income Tax, then on any and every question likely to be before the electors at the next general election. Numbers of the trimmers and rail-sitters will stay away or decline to vote, but that will not save them. Divided up they must be, and the man who oftenest compels the natural enemies of the people to commit themselves either to the Policy of Reform or the Policy of Reaction is he who has the best grasp of the duties of a Militant Labour Party wishing to leave the world a little better than they found it.