The Rt. Hon. Mr. Wheatley Joins The Alliance. (1928)

From the July 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been calculated that of the rich persons who joined the Labour Party recently 50 per cent. were already candidates and the others were signing the book daily at the “Parliamentary Employment Exchange.” ("Daily Herald,” 26/6/28.)

The above is from the speech of the Right Hon. John Wheatley, M.P., Minister of Health in the Labour Government of 1924 and supporter of the Holy Catholic Church.

The new alliance of Cook, Maxton and Wheatley has a programme described by Mr. Wheatley thus :

   Cook and Maxton declare that the workers should constitutionally seize the present surplus wealth of the idle rich and use it to give a decent standard of life here and now to the working classes.

So the party of rich candidates (the Labour Party) are going to seize—by taxation—some of the surplus and give it to the poor.

How that is going to affect the exploiting nature of Capitalism Mr. Wheatley doesn’t explain. It sounds as revolutionary as Lloyd George’s Insurance Act or Gladstone’s Death Duties. What this triple alliance want is pathetically put by Wheatley—“You should hit Capitalism oftener and harder.” How hard and how often, Mr. Wheatley? To stand for the overthrow of Capitalism, not often but all the time, is not their way. And it would not sound as well as Mr. Wheatley’s patriotic reformism as made plain in his evidence in his libel action.

Adolph Kohn