After the little scene in the “House” on Nov. 12, it can hardly be argued that the workers have gained even a more sympathetic administration of capitalism by the advent of the workman Cabinet Minister. After Mr. Asquith, who has no reputation for kindliness toward the workers, had promised the removal of certain restrictions in the dispensation of relief, the L.G.B. order, instead of instructing such removal, made it a voluntary action by the authority. Taxed with this in the “House,” Mr. Burns replied that he had adopted the best way of carrying out the Prime Minister’s promise. Mr. Asquith, however, disagreed, and the order is to be replaced by one incorporating the removal of the disability of having received Poor Law Relief within a specified time. Mr. Burns had better be careful. Already dissatisfaction is being expressed in high Liberal circles owing to his not playing the game carefully enough, and if he assumes a callous, unsympathetic attitude toward an unemployed problem which compels even the Premier to affect commiseration, he will have to give place to one who will smile and frown with his master, and shed tears to order. A few more examples like that under notice will blow the gaff on Liberal hypocrisy completely. Burns’ special function in the Cabinet was to conciliate working-class demands for independent representation and to show that the Liberal Party was so concerned to have the voice of Labour in its counsels as to obviate the necessity for separate representation.
To realise that the “short, square built man in the straw hat” who talked himself hoarse on behalf of the dockers in 1889 and the man who is out-Heroding Herod in the cruel, callous administration of relief to the unfortunates of capitalism are the same John Burns is difficult, and shows how complete a control over their representatives must the workers exercise before their convictions can be made to prevail.
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