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 THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
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 LOS ANGELES 
 
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 I'holo by .Wcssrt, Elliott i: /•///. 
 
 MR. JOHN HURNS, M. P.
 
 Bijou Biographies. — No. IV. 
 
 Mr. John Burns, M.P. 
 
 By G. H. Knott, M.A. 
 
 ^ 
 
 London : 
 
 Henry J. Drane, Salisbury House, Salisbtrry 
 
 Square, Fleet Street, E.G. 
 
 1901.
 
 MIN. 
 
 hd 
 
 PREFATORY. B^S R ^ 
 
 The following sketch of the career of Mr. 
 John Burns is not intended to be either 
 critical, laudatory, or denunciatory. It is simply 
 a narrative, coloured with a certain, even a 
 considerable, amount of sympathy with the 
 personality and aim of its subject. General 
 criticism of the social and political changes 
 implied in the short word " Socialism" seemed 
 unnecessary, and it is therefore not offered. 
 The idea is amongst us, and it will triumph or 
 die out, as other ideas have done, according to 
 its destiny and whatever the arguments for or 
 against it may be. Mr. Burns is a well-known 
 man, who has been much talked and written 
 about, owing to his association in Parliament 
 and the Municipality with socialistic ideas. 
 He has undoubtedly had considerable influence 
 in public life during the last dozen years. 
 It is very probable that a man of his ability 
 and force of character will continue, and 
 perhaps extend, this influence. In this is 
 the sufficient reason for the narrative of 
 biographical and other facts here presented. 
 The laudation or the denunciation must be 
 supplied by the reader.
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 Born 1858, at Vauxhall ; apprenticed himselt 
 as engineer ; visited Niger as foreman 
 engineer, 1877-8 ; toured through France, 
 Germany, and Austria, 1880; was defeated 
 as Socialist candidate for Nottingham, 
 1S85 ; conspicuous in unemployed agita- 
 tion, 1886, and in the West-End riots of 
 February, 1887 ; imprisoned in 1887 for 
 resisting police in Trafalgar Square ; 
 organised great Dock Strike, 1889 ; 
 elected to the London County Council, 
 1889-92-95-98; M.P. for Battersea, 1892 ; 
 re-elected 1895 and 1900.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Introductory: Working- Class Leaders, 
 Old and New — Preparing the Ground 
 — Trade Unionism and Socialism, - 7 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 John Burns' Early Life — Victor Delahaye, 
 the Refugee Communard — Work on 
 the Niger : Two Anecdotes— Return 
 to England and " Demagogy,"- - 20 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 Organising Labour — The Champion of the 
 Unemployed — The Trafalgar Square 
 Trouble— Socialism from the Dock, - 34 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Twelve Years of Crowded Life : as 
 County Councillor, as the Dock 
 Strike Leader, and as Member of 
 Parliament, 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Review and Forecast : What will Burns 
 do next ? — The Needs of the Radicals 
 — Burns a Possible Leader, - - Si
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Introductory — Working- Class Leaders, Old 
 and New — Preparing the Ground — 
 Trade Unionism and Socialism. 
 
 The issue of the great political and 
 industrial revolutions during the nine- 
 teenth century may be described in 
 one sentence : The labouring classes 
 have become the masters of their own 
 fortunes. It was only within ten years 
 of the death of William Cobbett in i S3 5 
 that the laws forbidding the combination 
 of workmen to raise their wages, or to 
 alter the conditions of their employment 
 were repealed. Cobbett was the old 
 style of working man's leader. He 
 was an agitator in politics, because a
 
 8 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 long series of political measures had to 
 be passed before working men were at 
 liberty to apply themselves, under 
 leaders of a new type, to the study of 
 the economical questions with which 
 they are now principally occupied. He 
 was sixty years of age before he was able 
 for the first time to enter Parliament. 
 It was considered characteristic of his 
 " matchless effrontery and impudence " 
 that he had made an appeal to the 
 public for ;^5ooo, in order that he 
 might advocate the cause of reform in 
 the House of Commons. After several 
 unsuccessful efforts he succeeded, not 
 because he had a constituency of 
 -working men who supported him, but 
 through the influence of a Mr. Fielden 
 who had the borough of Oldham pretty 
 nearly under his control. He began 
 his working life at as early an age and 
 with as scanty an education as our 
 iabour leaders in these more recent
 
 MR JOHN BURNS, I^I.P. 9 
 
 days have done; his sympathies with 
 poverty and hard lives were as keen ; 
 he had devoted to the service of the 
 oppressed and unfranchised working 
 classes his great natural abilities and 
 self-acquired education, which, without 
 disparagement of his successors, were 
 at least equal to theirs; he was the 
 ablest political pamphleteer and 
 journalist of his day, with a style that 
 makes his work, ephemeral though 
 so much of it was, still readable 
 as literature with that of Swift or 
 Defoe, and yet he had to accept a 
 pocket borough in the end. When 
 pocket boroughs ceased to be, it 
 became harder, if that be possible, for 
 working-class leaders to represent the 
 interests of their class in Parliament, 
 and labour questions were more 
 discussed and legislated upon, either 
 by philanthropists or by manufacturers, 
 who were bitterly hostile to labour
 
 lO MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 legislation, or by Tories, who gleefully 
 took part in the fray to pay off old 
 grudges against the Manchester school 
 of Free Traders. Thirty -five years 
 passed before the extension of the 
 suffrage in boroughs enabled the great 
 body of town labourers to act directly 
 in political affairs, and forty years 
 passed before the Ballot Act of 1872 
 secured their independence of action. 
 The democratic political edifice may 
 be considered as roughly completed in 
 1884 with the admission of the agri- 
 cultural labourer to full citizenship. 
 We are not concerned here with 
 further electoral reforms which, though 
 they might affect the working classes 
 more directly, would affect at the same 
 time other classes along with them. 
 What we want to show is, that until 
 the labouring classes obtained political 
 enfranchisement their representation 
 in Parliament by their own class
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. II 
 
 fellows was impossible. When that 
 was achieved, and the property qualifi- 
 cation for members of Parliament was 
 abolished, as it was in 1858, then 
 came the rise of that new brand of 
 member known as the Labour represen- 
 tative, of whom John Burns, whose 
 interesting and strenuous career we are 
 about to relate, is at the present time 
 the most widely known and the most 
 distinguished. 
 
 But there is another side of English 
 life to which we must turn if we would 
 understand the heritage from which 
 the working classes were for many 
 generations excluded, and to which 
 they have been fully restored once 
 more only within the last half-dozen 
 years. In 1837 the towns were handed 
 back to their inhabitants, and the 
 corrupt oligarchies that had stifled the 
 free life of the municipalities were super- 
 seded by the reformed corporations
 
 12 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 that have played so important a 
 part, and are destined to an ever- 
 increasing importance, in the govern- 
 ment of England. There was one 
 exception, and the "corrupt oligarchy" 
 of the city of London remained. We 
 are not concerned to discuss here how 
 long and to what extent '' corruption " 
 remained in the veins of the " city " 
 while the fresh blood was rushing 
 vigorously through the vessels of the 
 reformed corporations. The " city " 
 remains, but there is now the County 
 Council of the greater London and the 
 twenty-eight new boroughs constituted 
 on the broad lines of the democratic 
 municipalities of the provincial towns. 
 Whether the extraordinary dissection 
 of the metropolis is or is not a retro- 
 grade step in municipal government, 
 whether it is or is not destined to be 
 permanent, it is not in our plan to con- 
 sider. We are only directing attention
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. I3 
 
 to the fact that in provincial municipal 
 life and in metropolitan municipal life, 
 as well as in the government of the 
 counties and parishes by the Local 
 Government Act, 1889, and the Parish 
 Councils Act, 1894, the control by 
 the masses of the people of their local 
 interests has been inmiensely extended, 
 and opportunities of public activity 
 have been afforded them from which 
 they were previously excluded. Here, 
 again, as in Imperial political life, we 
 have John Burns, the hero of our 
 story, representing, in its highest 
 development, the role that working 
 men have been enabled to play in 
 the local government of the country by 
 the reform of municipal and county 
 institutions. 
 
 'J'hroughout all this period the 
 working classes had been acquiring 
 political and social education from 
 many sources. Their organisation into
 
 14 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 trade unions was the most fruitful. 
 The unions stimulated the leaders of 
 working men in the middle of the 
 century to consider economical ques- 
 tions and the actual management of 
 corporate property, and the guidance 
 of combined movements of workmen 
 for improving their industrial position 
 gave them a practical training in affairs 
 which was a better preparation for 
 poHtics than the ordinary middle class 
 member of Parliament ever gets, or 
 even those who, by the advantages of 
 birth, are hereditary Cabinet ministers. 
 In spite of the general absence of 
 provision for the education of the 
 working classes, the stress of economical 
 and social questions so acted upon its 
 better members that there was never 
 a time more fertile in a splendid race 
 of self-educated men than the period 
 when the trade unions were fighting 
 for existence and power. While
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 1 5 
 
 working men were establishing trade 
 unions, co-operative societies, building 
 societies, and mechanics' institutes, 
 they were reading Adam Smith, Owen, 
 and Mill, and their theoretical creation 
 was going on side by side with their 
 increasing practical capacity. This 
 training they were getting for forty 
 years ; they influenced politics in- 
 directly before they received political 
 enfranchisement ; they were prepared 
 to influence it more directly when they 
 entered into the circle of the governing 
 classes. But there is this further to 
 be noted : the unique combination of 
 theory and practice in economics had 
 this for result, that the working classes 
 were the first of the classes to discover 
 that there was something wrong in the 
 old doctrines of the "classical econo- 
 mists." The experience of John Burns, 
 when on the Niger he read that famous 
 chapter of Mill on Communism, and was
 
 1 6 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 converted to a positive and reasoned 
 belief in Socialism from a mere general 
 impression and vague consciousness or 
 something being wrong — that is the 
 history of a good many other readers 
 of the literature of Sociahsm which was 
 finding its way from Germany, and the 
 teaching of Lassalle, Marx, and others, 
 and beginning to supersede, not only 
 the " classical economists," but to 
 make obsolete most of the academic 
 and philanthropic Socialism of the 
 older writers and founders of so-called 
 socialistic communities, such as St. 
 Simon, Fourier, and Owen. Amongst 
 other signs of the times were the 
 establishment of the Social Democratic 
 Federation in 1880, the publication of 
 Henry George's " Progress and 
 Poverty," the founding of the Fabian 
 Society in 1883. Trade unionism in 
 its earliest stages had demanded State 
 help for accomplishing many of the
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 1 7 
 
 objects it desired ; later it had seemed 
 to acquiesce in the fashionable 
 economics of laissez Jairc^ and its 
 leaders, many of them admirable men, 
 were as extreme individualists as 
 Richard Cobden or John Bright and 
 other Manchestrians. But there now 
 arose the new Trade Unionisn), 
 l)ermeated by Socialist doctrine and 
 with a wider programme for introducing 
 State and municipal action into indus- 
 trial operations. The ideal trade 
 union leader was no longer to limit his 
 efforts to the individualistic struggle 
 between his trade and his employer, 
 but to seek, by action in Parliament 
 and on local bodies, to affect the whole 
 conditions of industry and advocate 
 any and every proposal that had relation 
 to the improvement of the life of the 
 working classes. Being now within 
 tlie constitution, these classes decided 
 that they had in the constitutional 
 
 B
 
 l8 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 political lever the instrument by which 
 they could influence legislation and 
 State action to realise their economical 
 ideas. They gave up the role of 
 revolutionists — if they had ever wished 
 to play it — of impracticable idealists, 
 of extremists. In their Trade Union 
 Congresses, which for over thirty years 
 have kept their principles and aims so 
 conspicuously before the public, to the 
 advantage alike of themselves and the 
 public, their programmes have been at 
 times too advanced for immediate 
 adoption ; but their attitude may now 
 be defined very much in the language ot 
 the Fabian Society's policy as a recogni- 
 tion of the fact that neither Socialists 
 nor other people can have their own way 
 in everything, but must compromise 
 as a necessary condition of political 
 progress. 
 
 John Burns is the very embodi- 
 ment of this new school. His career
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 19 
 
 is typical of it. His success indi- 
 cates its possibilities. He illustrates 
 it in his career as Trade Unionist, 
 County Councillor, and Member of 
 Parliament. " Mr. Burns, you have 
 not said much about theoretical 
 Socialism lately, have you?" asked a 
 friend. '* No," was the reply, " I have 
 been putting it into the form of bricks 
 and mortar." This saying is eminently 
 characteristic of Burns the idealist, the 
 practical man, and the man of literary 
 and oratorical gifts, who loves to say 
 good things as he loves to do great 
 ones. The combination implies a rare 
 capacity, wherever it is found, of 
 statesmanship and leadership, given 
 the opportunity.
 
 20 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 John Burns' Early Life — Victor Delahaye, the 
 Refugee Communard — Work on the 
 Niger : Two Anecdotes — Return to 
 England and "Demagogy." 
 
 In a room at io8 Lavender Hill, 
 Battersea, hangs a beautiful engraving 
 of Nasmyth's portrait of Robert Bums. 
 When you become acquainted with the 
 first fact about John Burns, that his 
 father was an Ayrshire man, it is in» 
 evitable that you ask, as you note the 
 general resemblance of his contour 
 with that of the poet, and mark the 
 brilliant dark eyes and black hair 
 suggestive of the imaginative and artistic 
 strain — Is Burns the " demagogue " 
 descended from the demagogue poet 
 wlio wrote "A man's a man for a' that" ? 
 John Burns, with that adherence to 
 fact which distinguishes him, pleases 
 himself with the probability, but remarks
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 21 
 
 suggestively that the genealogy has not 
 actually been made out. When Air. 
 Burns becomes (a reformed) Lord 
 Mayor of London, perhaps the pedi- 
 greeists will help him. If he has not a 
 drop of English blood in his veins he 
 was born in London — quarter Batter- 
 sea — where he has lived the whole of 
 his life since his birthday in 1858, and 
 this quarter he has represented in the 
 County Council of London and the 
 Imperial Parliament since 1889 and 
 1S92 respectively. Two years before 
 the Elementary Education Act, 1870, 
 was passed, as a lad of ten he was work- 
 ing in a candle factory. Weird though 
 the story seems, it is a fact that 
 at twelve he was a page-boy in 
 buttons ; probably, however, in no 
 aristocratic or "capitalist" service: or, 
 if so, he at anyrate ran no risk with 
 his temperament of becoming a *'pam- 
 pered menial." lie had been to
 
 22 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 school, but it hardly needs saying 
 that his education was not of the 
 kind usually prescribed for members 
 of Parliament or even County Coun- 
 cillors. That he had to begin working 
 so soon is accounted for by the 
 widowhood of his mother; and it also 
 happened that, such as his education 
 was, it was interfered with by his having, 
 in various casual employments by day 
 or in the evening, to help his mother in 
 bearing the burden of their poverty. 
 
 From fourteen to twenty-one was the 
 real period to which we must look for 
 the development of Burns' character. 
 It is the period of his apprenticeship as 
 an engineer. It was then that his bias 
 showed itself. Ambitious youths of his 
 class take to reading, and they read 
 because they have been quick to see 
 and to feel the disadvantages of their 
 social position. They want to find a 
 remedy, and they think they will find
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 23 
 
 it in books. They are not merely " fond 
 of reading" in the ordinary sense; they 
 read with an object. Burns was in an 
 atmosphere of conflict between the 
 workman and the employer. Would 
 he not read Ruskin and Carlyle ? Of 
 course he would, and put the dots on 
 their "i's" from his own experience. 
 What was it but the discontent of a 
 superior mind that made him prowl 
 around the New Cut picking up such 
 cheap copies as he could afford to buy: 
 '* Owen's New Moral World," or what- 
 ever of the sort he might chance upon? 
 Then as a Scotchman he was a born 
 controversialist, and nature had en- 
 dowed him with magnificent strength 
 of body and lungs and a resonant 
 voice. Inevitably he would see 
 '•tyrannies" that he would die rather 
 than submit to — scale would matter 
 not, it was the '' principle." Then 
 would come the street corner or
 
 24 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 the Clapham Common oration, and 
 the appetite for exercise of powers 
 would grow by what it fed on. This 
 was what happened. For one of his 
 protests his indentures were cancelled, 
 but restored. In this time, too, he 
 made acquaintance with Socialism — 
 French Socialism, that of the Com- 
 munists of the terrible year 1870. 
 Victor Delahaye was a refugee Com- 
 munard, and the chances of work threw 
 them together, with the result that they 
 joined their forces in making telegraph 
 writing instruments. Later, when the 
 name of John Burns was used as a 
 bogey in the West-End, and he was 
 reported to be marching on London 
 like a modern Jack Cade at the head 
 of 60,000 men, it was all accounted 
 for by the pernicious teaching of the 
 revolutionary Delahaye. Now, Burns 
 wrote a beautiful little obituary notice 
 of this Delahaye, whose portrait is tliat
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 25 
 
 of an intellectual and refined idealist. 
 Burns speaks of him thus — ** He settled 
 in London, worked in several of its 
 shops, and made himself immensely 
 popular by the simplicity of his char- 
 acter, the breadth and good-humoured 
 tolerance of his disposition. I was 
 privileged to be one of his most inti- 
 mate friends, and worked with him 
 under conditions that enabled me to 
 realise the value to labour of such a 
 man. One of the formative influences 
 of my own life, a centre of inspiration 
 to all around him, a repository of 
 experience and knowledge, he was 
 always available for any service that 
 progress claimed for him. He was 
 frequently entrusted by the French 
 Government with commissions to study 
 and report upon the labour question in 
 many countries, and was a member of 
 the Berlin Conference on Labour. In 
 his researches into the economic and
 
 26 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 social conditions of the industrial 
 classes he was made a Chevalier of the 
 Legion of Honour, and was justly 
 esteemed by students who have in 
 modern times been straightening the 
 path for the ever- victorious army of 
 labour to follow. His friend always, 
 his pupil often, his admirer ever, his 
 mourner now, I take the opportunity of 
 testifying our sincere regret for the 
 death of our brother member, Victor 
 Delahaye, than whom labour never 
 had a better soldier, nor society 
 a better champion, nor the poor of all 
 countries a better friend." This much 
 for Victor Delahaye ; but, we may ask. 
 Where did Burns learn to write 
 English ? Is there any more eloquent 
 testimony to the education that he had 
 been giving himself by the reading of 
 great books in his earlier years than the 
 fact that he was able to express so 
 pathetically and purely and lucidly this
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 27 
 
 regret for his friend ? Such English is 
 hardly taught in our Board schools. 
 
 At twenty-two Burns was married, 
 and he was for ever precluded from 
 denouncing the bad economics of the 
 working classes in marrying early. But 
 there is reason to believe he is not 
 " sound " on this point owing to a 
 happy experience. As the tale is told 
 we tell it. There happened a brush 
 with the police on Clapham Common 
 — a foretaste of Trafalgar Square — and 
 the orator was marched off, " flushed 
 with the struggle, and with his clothins; 
 torn and disordered." In the crowd 
 was " a certain pretty young woman 
 named Charlotte Gale, the daughter of 
 a Battersea shipwright." That was the 
 first meeting of the hero and heroine of 
 a love story begun, continued, and not 
 yet ended, though the moment is long 
 since past when the love story of fiction 
 usually finishes. In the house at
 
 28 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 Lavender Hill a youngster of five, as 
 stalwart as the father and as fair as 
 his mother, completes the story which 
 began on Clapham Common. 
 
 To return to more prosaic details which 
 fall into their place before his maniage 
 and fill the period from 1877 to 1878. 
 The scene is the West African Coast, the 
 Delta of the Niger at Akassa, where he 
 went as foreman engineer to the Niger 
 Company, and, as he will tell you, a 
 servant of the Right Hon. Joseph 
 Chamberlain, who was a large share- 
 holder in the company. Since those 
 days Africa has become a more popular 
 subject than it was then, but Burns 
 observed many things there of which 
 he subsequently made use in speeches 
 on the South African question. Even 
 economical questions were illuminated 
 by his Niger experience. "You 
 talk of savagery, and misery, and 
 slavery," says he, as we pass by a
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS. M.P. 29 
 
 group of houses on the h'ne between 
 BatterseaandWaterlooStation. "There 
 is more of all three, and more degrada- 
 tion of women than you will see on the 
 West Coast of Africa." Then he had 
 taken his copy of Mill's " Political 
 Economy," and he shows you the be- 
 smeared and stained volume, and turns 
 up the chapter on Communism which, 
 as we have said, converted him to 
 Socialism. Political economy in the 
 Tropics seems incongruous, but very 
 curiously it happened at Akassa, that 
 under the foufidation of an old engine 
 shop, and buried in the ground, he 
 found a still more dilapidated copy of 
 Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," 
 and read it. 
 
 Not everybody admires Socialists or 
 Socialism, but all admire pluck and 
 resource — qualities, both mental and 
 physical, that Burns has shown through- 
 out his life. His exhibition of them
 
 30 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 in West Africa is only in a more 
 unaccustomed scene than Trafalgar 
 Square, or the East London Docks, 
 or the Old Bailey Dock. Seven years 
 ago Mr. John Parkin told in the 
 Engineers' Gazette some of his 
 experiences on the Niger. He tells 
 how he was in danger from a large 
 snake, and took to his heels. " I was 
 soon arrested in my inglorious flight 
 by the derisive laughter of a fellow 
 engineer, who, with characteristic pluck 
 and presence of mind, picked up a 
 shovel and chased the serpent that was 
 chasing me, and with a well-aimed blow 
 cut it in two." That daring engineer, 
 says Mr. Parkin, was John Burns, now 
 L.C.C. and M.P. for Battersea. 
 
 Again, *' This was not the only occasion 
 on which Burns showed his intrepidity. 
 One day he and I were returning from 
 Brass River through the creeks in the 
 steam launch. The propeller had only
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 3 1 
 
 two blades, which were dovetailed into 
 the boss. They worked loose and fell 
 off. The situation was alarming, as we 
 were near a small village inhabited by 
 cannibals, whilst the creek was swarm- 
 ing with sharks and reptiles. Fortun- 
 ately the creek was not deep, it being 
 low tide. The bottom was composed 
 of soft stinking mud and decayed vege- 
 table matter, so we had faint hopes of 
 finding either of the blades. I pro- 
 posed testing my skill as a diver, but 
 Burns would not hear of it. ' No,' 
 said he, *you are married and I am 
 single; if either of us risks his life, I'm 
 the man,' and immediately stripping, 
 he plunged in. To my delighted sur- 
 prise he found one blade, and we 
 managed to fix it in the boss, and 
 proceeded very gingerly on our course, 
 and arrived at Akassa in safety, though 
 several hours late. We had been a 
 long time without food, and were
 
 32 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 ravenously hungry. Both of us did our 
 duty at the table, but I was ' not in 
 it with Burns, who ate nearly the 
 entire leg of a goat.* It was during 
 the same year too that, while on the 
 sick list, he jumped from the poop ot 
 the steamer and rescued the cook, who 
 had fallen overboard into the sea." 
 With these samples of his adventures 
 we end the African experiences. He 
 returned to England at twenty with 
 a hundred pounds; resumed the 
 ''demagogy" that led to Clapham 
 Common and the marriage we have 
 spoken of; went, after the honeymoon, 
 for a six months* tour through France, 
 Germany, and Austria, sight-seeing and 
 studying the foreign workmen and their 
 conditions; returned and, the period 
 of preparation being over, settled down 
 to the work of his life, as will be sub- 
 sequently related, meanwhile for six or 
 seven years labouring "with his own
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, iM.P. 33; 
 
 hands" at his trade, until it occurred 
 to a sensible section of working men 
 that it is not good economy to kilfc 
 their prophet if ;£"2 a week will keep- 
 him alive.
 
 34 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Organising Labour -The Champion of the 
 Unemployed — The Trafalgar Square 
 Trouble — Socialism from the Dock. 
 
 We may ask here, Why should John 
 Burns from 1880 to 1889, a young 
 married man, a clever workman, with 
 brains and strength that would have 
 made for him a fortune, choose, instead 
 of attending to his business, to work in- 
 cessantly the various agitations which 
 covered that period up to the great 
 Dock Strike of 1889? What was it? 
 The enthusiasm of humanity, ambition, 
 or some other motive or motives? The 
 fact is, a Hampden of the village or ot 
 the Empire is a psychological mystery. 
 Why patriots or politicians should 
 scorn delights and live laborious days is 
 a standing puzzle to the man of 
 ordinary human nature who loves to 
 attend to his own interests and follow
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 35 
 
 his own ease. Lord Salisbury or Lord 
 Rosebery, Mr. Chamberlain or jMr. 
 John Burns, are all equally difficult of 
 analysis. If ambition meant in Burns' 
 case to get into Parliament, it was 
 certainly not that. If it meant the 
 crave for impressing his fellows with 
 his personality, of guiding and govern- 
 ing them, of making himself notable, 
 of exercising his great gifts for the 
 pleasure that gives to men of the class 
 we have mentioned, then we get some 
 explanation. We may be sure, too, 
 that he has the rare temperament of 
 the man that can become as wroth over 
 injustice done to the pubHc as over a 
 personal injury to himself, and who, 
 once he has convinced himself of 
 wrongs to be righted, will set about the 
 work and continue in it, his enthusiasm 
 for humanity being greatly reinforced 
 by native obstinacy, dogged will, and 
 a whole category of other egoistical
 
 36 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 feelings. But let us distrust our analysis 
 if we can only explain a career like 
 John Burns' by imputing a still lower 
 range of motives. 
 
 Burns began his work in Battersea, 
 and preached Socialism, and organised 
 the labourers with the intention ot 
 capturing the local authorities and 
 manning them with his disciples. It 
 was his jumping-off place. He began 
 there putting his theories into practice ; 
 he learnt the art of popular oratory 
 while he was learning and teaching 
 what he had learned of municipal 
 government, and what were its possi- 
 bilities as a field of practical Socialism. 
 By 1884 his fame had spread beyond 
 the boundaries of Battersea. He made 
 certain speeches in that year at the 
 Industrial Remuneration Conference 
 in London, and they cost him his 
 situation. For seven weeks he was 
 one of the unemployed, of whose cause
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 37 
 
 he was soon to be the recognised 
 champion. That was becoming the 
 problem of the time, and though the 
 great Dock Strike did not occur till 1889, 
 it was during the years 1884, 1885, 
 and 1886 that Burns had commenced 
 as part of his work of propagandism 
 what he calls his crusade among the 
 dockers. '' A crusade of the dawn ; 
 for we (John Williams and Burns) did 
 our haranguing amongst the men in 
 the hours of the morning before their 
 work hours had commenced. I my- 
 self, with my wife, have frequently 
 left home at three and four 
 o'clock in the morning, winter 
 and summer; tramped to the docks, 
 made speeches at three different 
 gates, and returned to begin my day's 
 work in the West-End at seven or 
 eight o'clock. I have done this for 
 weeks and months together. I was 
 doing it at intervals through the years
 
 38 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 1884, 1885, and 1886." It was this 
 propaganda during years of great dis- 
 tress, when, too, the leaven of SociaHsm 
 was, as we have pointed out, working 
 in thousands of brains that are sluggish 
 enough in time of prosperity, which 
 Burns pushed with all his energy and 
 strength of mind, body, and tongue, 
 until he became one of the best known 
 figures in the seething mass of un- 
 satisfied labour. The "unemployed" 
 reached the dimensions of a class, a 
 fifth estate in the British constitution, 
 and Bums of Tower Hill, the " man 
 with the red flag," was its leader and 
 prophet, appealing to the Government 
 and to the local authorities for assist- 
 ance by setting the unemployed to 
 work — a doctrine for which he could 
 quote the original intention of the 
 English poor law to establish a working 
 day of eight hours, and otherwise to 
 abandon their passive attitude in face 
 
 i
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 39 
 
 of the destitution and misery that 
 prevailed. To the men themselves he 
 preached the doctrine of the reconstitu- 
 tion of society on a basis where men 
 should receive the full value of their 
 labour — " in short, society should be 
 regarded as something more than a 
 few titled non-producers who take the 
 whole of the wealth which the useful 
 workers alone produce." Other ad- 
 visers of working men had a different 
 programme. Messrs. Peters, Kelly 
 Kenney, and Ternan, for example, were 
 telling them that free trade was ruining 
 them, and they were working what in 
 1886 was a much more palatable move- 
 ment to the traders than Socialism — 
 the Fair Trade movement. This 
 "arrant imposture," as Burns deemed 
 it, came to a head, and disappeared at 
 the same time with the famous affair of 
 8th February, 1 886, in Trafalgar Square, 
 which led to Burns' appearance, with
 
 40 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 three other Social Democrats, at the 
 Old Bailey on a charge of sedition, 
 "Conspiracy, and rioting. A Fair Trade 
 fleeting was called in the Square, and 
 l^urns went there to move an amend- 
 fment, or to hold a meeting of his own 
 i( that were not allowed There were 
 13,000 or 14,000 persons present, and 
 Burns was hoisted on to the plinth ol 
 Nelson's Monument, and made a speech 
 ■ending with a resolution of the Social 
 Democratic Federation. Then the 
 Fair Traders came, but their meeting 
 proved abortive before the superior 
 attractions of the Burns programme 
 and the Burns oratory. There was no 
 incitement to violence, but by the time 
 the opposition m.eeting was over the 
 Fair Traders' platforms were being 
 ypset ; and to avoid further danger 
 Burns started off with his followers in 
 procession through the West- End to 
 Hyde Park. The procession got as
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 4 1 
 
 far as the Carlton Club peacefully. 
 Burns' description of what followed is 
 from his Old Bailey speech. He re- 
 minded the jury that " there is a class 
 of men who make a practice on occa- 
 sions of political demonstrations to 
 laugh and jeer from their club windows 
 at the poverty of what they term the 
 * great unwashed.' " This, he said, hap- 
 pened at the Carlton Club, and stone- 
 throwing began as the result of the 
 "stupid, ungentlemanly, criminal con- 
 duct of the Carlton Club members." 
 Then it went on ''right up St. James' 
 Street and down Piccadilly, and riot, if 
 you define riot as the breaking of win- 
 dows, was supreme. I was unable to 
 check it. The fault was not mine." 
 From the Achilles Statue in Hyde 
 Park Burns and his friends — Champion, 
 Williams, and Hyndraan— called on their 
 followers to discontinue the outrages, 
 and the meeting then quietly dispersed.
 
 42 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 The charge against Burns and his 
 fellows could not be sustained, and 
 they were acquitted. Seditious con- 
 spiracy, as he pointed out in his speech, 
 was a ridiculous charge in the circum- 
 stances ; and all his evidence showed 
 that the accused had done all they 
 could to stop disorder. An interesting 
 part of the trial is that Mr. Ruskin, 
 who had been near the Square, volun- 
 tarily offered himself as a witness on 
 Burns' behalf. Two other details 
 may be mentioned to illustrate Burns' 
 life at this time and his characteristic 
 aplomb. After the meeting at the 
 Achilles S tatue the n e wspapers placarded 
 the streets with the announcement that 
 John Burns was marching on London 
 from Deptford at the head of 60,000 
 men. What was happening was this. 
 Burns had only twopence in his pocket, 
 and he had gone down to Hoe's 
 machine shops, and was there waiting
 
 MR. JOPIN BURNS, M.P. 43 
 
 to pick up a job. When the warrant 
 was issued for his arrest, Inspector 
 Littlechild drove to Lavender Hill in a 
 cab. He was met accidentally by Burns, 
 who hailed the cab and asked him if 
 he was going to Lavender Hill. The 
 Inspector said he was, but asked him 
 what he had to do with it. '' Only this, 
 I am John Burns, and you had better 
 arrest me now." He did so, and the 
 two went off together without the 
 warrant having even been read. 
 
 Trafalgar Square, however, was again 
 to be the scene of another important 
 event in Burns' stormy career. Meet- 
 ings in connection with the unemployed 
 agitation continued to be held from 
 time to time up to October of 1887. 
 The West-End tradesmen and others 
 disliked them the more they saw of 
 them, for very intelligible reasons, after 
 the affair of February. The right to 
 hold meetings there was denied, and
 
 44 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 the Home Secretary and Sir Charles 
 Warren, the Chief of PoUce, assumed 
 the power of issuing proclamations to 
 prohibit them. In November, 1887, the 
 Coercion Act in Ireland and William 
 O'Brien's breechless condition was 
 exciting much sympathy in many en- 
 thusiastic circles, and a meeting — not of 
 Socialists or of unemployed in particular 
 — was announced to be held in the 
 Square to consider the question. The 
 right of free speech seemed to Burns 
 to be at slake if Trafalgar Square were 
 closed, and free speech for proclaiming 
 injustices and claiming rights was the 
 first essential for the mission of his life. 
 Trafalgar Square, too, was the finest site 
 in Europe for demonstrating, and he 
 believed there was a police conspiracy 
 against all demonstrations such as he 
 was associated with both there and 
 elsewhere; he could give plenty of 
 instances in proof. Sir Charles
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 45 
 
 Warren represented a tyranny against 
 which he was bound to protest. It 
 was all very well to advise him and his 
 followers to go to Hyde Park, but he 
 had the answer that, twenty years ago, 
 Mr. Walpole, the T(5»ry Home Secretary, 
 said it was inexpedient that meetings 
 should be held there ; let people hold 
 their meetings in Trafalgar Square if 
 they are legal and peaceably conducted. 
 " Sir," Burns said, '* if you prohibit us 
 from the Square you will soon revive 
 the Walpolean arguments against Hyde 
 Park and the other parks too." Thus 
 came about *' Bloody Sunday," when 
 the police, exasperated and wearied by 
 a long series of troublesome experiences, 
 turned on the crowd attempting to 
 force its way into the Square and 
 bludgeoned right and left unmercifully, 
 with the result that two men were 
 killed and hundreds savagely beaten. 
 Burns and Cunninghame-Graham, who
 
 46 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 had met casually, forced their way arm 
 in arm into the Square, the only two, 
 not without being severely handled, 
 and were taken into custody, and, 
 shortly, for space forbids more detail, 
 were ultimately charged at the Old 
 Bailey with rioting and holding an 
 unlawful assembly. Burns' speech was 
 a finer performance than his previous 
 one from that place, where, as he men- 
 tioned, Lord Erskine had years ago 
 successfully defended popular rights 
 and liberties ; but the most noticeable 
 feature of it is that it is very little 
 occupied with the events of "Bloody 
 Sunday." He argued the legal point 
 of the prohibition skilfully, and derided 
 the charge of " being armed and caus- 
 ing a riot," when, as he said, his only 
 arms were a pocket-handkerchief and 
 a tramway ticket. His speech was an 
 able presentation of the case for 
 Socialism, and a pathetic statement of
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 47 
 
 the hard conditions of the labouring 
 classes. Notwithstanding what had 
 happened, he had no bitterness against 
 the police : feminine spitefulness has 
 no place in Burns' disposition. "I 
 would try by education to win them 
 over to my principles, and seek their 
 co-operation as fellow - workmen in 
 trying to remove those inequalities 
 which their occupation brings them 
 face to face with daily. The causes 
 that make them sell their physical 
 ability are the same that drive them 
 into the army, that fill the streets with 
 groups of unemployed workmen — want 
 of work, or work at unremunerative 
 wages. These causes the unemployed 
 meetings want to mitigate. As a 
 Socialist, I want to remove these 
 causes." In another passage he said — 
 *' These men, the unemployed, have 
 taught the politician the very elements 
 of government : how to organise society
 
 48 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 during the transitional period from the 
 present competitive system, where the 
 policeman is absolutely necessary, to 
 the co-operative system, where the 
 teacher will take his place." The result 
 of the trial was the conviction of Burns 
 and Cunninghame-Graham, and their 
 sentence to three months* imprison- 
 ment, which they served in Pentonville. 
 '' Imprisonment," says Burns, *' is a 
 test that a man is in earnest." If we 
 have to record that from this time for- 
 ward no more was heard of meetings 
 in Trafalgar Square, we may suppose 
 that Burns and his party had lost their 
 labour, and, in fact, free speech did 
 not expire under the truncheons of the 
 police. So we might ask — What profit 
 had Burns of all his labour under the 
 sun? There is an answer which is 
 good for this and many other similar 
 cases, namely, that a technical victory 
 in the Law Courts is often a point where
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 49 
 
 the Government turns its face in an 
 opposite direction and finds its victory 
 null. Not to multiply instances, 
 ship money had to be paid, said the 
 Courts, but the feeling that had led to 
 refusal to pay it ultimately triumphed ; 
 and after any real popular protest 
 things hardly ever can be again what 
 they were before it was made. Burns 
 not long after he came out of prison 
 was in the County Council, and not 
 long after that in Parliament, and both 
 places, especially the former, were a 
 better rostrum than the plinth of 
 Nelson's Column ; but that was all 
 possible on account of the work done 
 in the preceding five years. Theoreti- 
 cal Socialism needed bringing from the 
 study towards the practical in the muni- 
 cipalities and the State. John Burns 
 and his friends did this by exploiting 
 the events of those years and turning 
 the attention of the working classes in
 
 50 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 the direction of improvement on 
 socialistic lines. Since then it has 
 been more clear to political parties 
 than it ever was before that, to use 
 Burns' words in his speech at the Old 
 Bailey in 1888, Liberal, Tory, and 
 Radical are only successful in their 
 appeals to the people in so far as their 
 programmes are socialistic in fact and 
 tendency. It is since then that the 
 sentence, " We are all Socialists now," 
 has become a commonplace. True, 
 there is still a long distance to be 
 traversed before the majority, even of 
 the working classes, will become con- 
 verted to as thorough -going an applica- 
 tion of socialistic principles as Bums 
 preached. He believes the ultimate 
 aims of Socialism will be accepted by 
 all, and it is only a matter of time and 
 education. That may be so or not, 
 but at any rate Burns made intelligible 
 to them what Socialism is, what its
 
 MR, JOHN BURNS, M.P. 5 1 
 
 aims are, and what are the methods 
 that have most promise of success in 
 carrying it out, in whatever degree it may 
 be considered desirable to carry it. As 
 his speech at the Old Bailey is a state- 
 ment of the general principles of which 
 all his subsequent election addresses 
 and speeches in Parliament and on 
 the Council have been applications, 
 we may close this chapter by a few 
 paragraphs from its peroration. '' Now, 
 what is this Socialism of which so much 
 is heard and feared ? " he asked. His 
 answers are : " It is a theory of society 
 which advocates a more just, orderly, 
 and harmonious arrangement of the 
 social relations of mankind than that 
 which now prevails. Substituting the 
 principle of association for that of com- 
 petition in every branch of production 
 and distribution. Socialism proposes 
 to abolish the system of wage slavery, 
 and establish instead governmental
 
 52 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 municipal co-operation, securing to 
 every honest worker the full value of 
 his labour, partly in personal remunera- 
 tion and partly in social and public 
 benefits, such as education and re- 
 creation, sustenance and care in old 
 age, not as a charity, but as a debt 
 that society owes to every useful 
 citizen. . . . Socialism proposes that 
 machinery shall do the world's work, 
 and that the whole people shall 
 own such machinery, and reap the 
 benefits individually and collectively, 
 not as at present, when machinery is 
 used by its owners to degrade the 
 human machines who work them, and 
 throw themselves out of work. Social- 
 ism proposes that the principles em- 
 bodied in municipalities owning for 
 the people the tramways, gas and 
 water works, and the State owning the 
 post-office, telegraphs, parcels post, 
 savings and deposit banks, insurance
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 53 
 
 departments, etc., should be extended 
 to all monopolies that in the hands of 
 individuals are a curse, but owned 
 collectively a blessing. The ' State,' 
 whose duty it is to carry on the 
 development, is a unity of citizens co- 
 operating, and by such co-operation 
 increasing a thousand times the strength 
 of all individuals comprised in it, and 
 giving them a power that would not be 
 at their disposal as individuals when 
 competing against each other. Its 
 poHtical expression would be a con- 
 vention of labour delegates elected by 
 universal adult suffrages." We have no 
 criticism to offer on this programme. 
 Our only consideration here is, that it 
 was and is John Burns' programme, 
 adopted in sincerity as the result of 
 much reading and thinking and experi- 
 ence of life amongst the very classes 
 who were groping Mindly for a solution 
 of the problem of poverty, because it
 
 54 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 was their problem in a sense that it 
 could not be to other classes. To 
 John Burns, Socialism offers this solu- 
 tion, and it is at least a philosophy, 
 and not the scrappy collection of odds 
 and ends that furnishes forth most 
 politicians. Instinct had led him to 
 become a labour leader; Socialism pro- 
 vided hrm with a programme, and his 
 good fortune and good sense enabled 
 him not long after the Old Bailey trial 
 and Pentonville to enter upon a further 
 phase of his career, in which he pro- 
 ceeded, as he has said, "to put into 
 bricks and mortar'' the ideas that he 
 had preached as an agitator.
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 55 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Twelve Years of Crowded Life : as County 
 Councillor, as the Dock Strike Leader 
 and as Member of Parliament. 
 
 Thi year in which John Burns came 
 out of prison was the year in which 
 the elections for the first London 
 Cointy Council took place. His wel- 
 cone from prison, with enthusiastic 
 denonstrations, being over, he returned 
 to his twofold work of making his own 
 liyng at the engineering trade and to his 
 popaganda on behalf of unionism and 
 p-actical Socialism. With his election 
 t) the County Council that impossible 
 ife, to any man who has not the 
 physique and vigour of John Bums, 
 ceased, and by a fund subscribed 
 for by the working men of Battersea 
 he was enabled to live in lordly 
 ease on two guineas a week, only 
 needing to work for fourteen or fifteen
 
 56 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 hours a day at labour more exhausting 
 than engineering. As we are men- 
 tioning this matter of payment for 
 services rendered, we may as well sate 
 that this sum continued to be all fhat 
 Burns received until 1892, when the 
 same constituents whom he represented 
 municipally raised a fundof;^5 a week 
 in order to enable him to represent thtm 
 in Parliament. With all the extra in- 
 evitable expenses of a member of 
 Parliament and Councillor doing Buns' 
 work, such as heavy correspondence 
 and travelling, the balance remainirg 
 for himself and his household wouli 
 not be more than half his salary. Tha; 
 is a sum that would hardly excite the 
 cupidity of an ordinary skilled artisan. 
 The new Council met in 1889, and 
 from the first moment the name of 
 John Burns began to be the symbol of 
 the new municipal activities, and a 
 centre of the enthusiasm or the hate
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 57 
 
 that they evoked from diverse parties. 
 There was a remarkable collection of 
 able and notable men on the Council, 
 taken from all grades and divi- 
 sions of political and social life. 
 Lord Rosebery was the chairman, 
 and one of the facts that most struck 
 the popular imagination was the close 
 association that bore the appearance 
 of affectionate friendship between the 
 Scottish Peer and his compatriot the 
 Scottish engineer. The English public 
 recognised the personal charm which, 
 though so variedly manifested, accounts 
 for the interest they have both from 
 that day to this continued to excite. 
 If Lord Rosebery was then on his trial, 
 John Burns was making an experiment 
 more important even than the making 
 of such a career as was naturally the 
 destiny of a man with Lord Rosebery's 
 ambitions and possibilities. Working- 
 class leadership, the ability, knowledge,
 
 58 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 and honesty of Avorking-class leaders, 
 were of inestimable importance to the 
 future of those classes, and if John 
 Burns broke down in his new sphere 
 of action, with him would go many of 
 the hopes of the competency of Labour 
 to work out its own aims by its own 
 instruments. Whatever other men had 
 gone to the Council for — personal 
 ambition, preparatory training for 
 wider political life, with intention to 
 obstruct the progress of the civic reform 
 which was expected from the Council, 
 or with the enthusiasm that their pro- 
 spective reform had inspired — Burns had 
 gone there above all to carry Socialism 
 into the midst of it. Other men might 
 be amateurs in their work for the 
 Council; he was the man paid for 
 doing his work, and his heart was in it. 
 There were two directions in which 
 he looked : first, to the breaking down 
 of the monopolies of the companies
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 59 
 
 — gas companies, water companies, 
 tramway companies, omnibus services, 
 markets, docks, electric lighting, and 
 their municipalisation — a first step in 
 municipal Socialism which some of the 
 chief towns in England had taken. 
 A fm-ther step would be the organisa- 
 tion of industry and distribution, 
 especially of those departments dealing 
 with the necessaries of life. We may 
 say at once that in those respects Burns 
 has seen comparatively little results 
 from the Council's labours or his own. 
 But in the other direction in which he 
 looked he had remarkable success. 
 He was the only Labour member on the 
 Council, and he was entrusted with the 
 direction of its labour policy in regard 
 to its own servants, and the terms on 
 which its work should be done either 
 by itself or contractors. At a debate 
 at Toynbee Hall, when suspicion was 
 thrown on the value of his labours by
 
 6o MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 the classes whose welfare he has done 
 so much for, Alderman Herre said — 
 *'As a banker I would say that John 
 Burns' services to London and labour 
 in this country are worth three miUion 
 pounds a year." What he meant may 
 be shown by selecting a few items from 
 the immense number of changes which 
 Burns brought about. It was he who 
 drafted the series of proposals adopted 
 by the Council which resulted in March, 
 1899, in the policy that all tenders for 
 contracts should contain a declara- 
 tion to pay such rate of wages and 
 observe such hours of labour as are 
 generally accepted as fair in their trade. 
 Subsequently, as the result of immense 
 labour on committees and wherever 
 he could bring influence to bear, he 
 secured trade union wages in all 
 branches of the Council's work; sub- 
 letting and sub-contracting were 
 abolished; hours of labour were
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 6 1 
 
 reduced from 68 to 54 or 48; overtime 
 was abolished ; and a large extension 
 was made of direct labour by the 
 Council in many ©f their departments. 
 The Works department of the Council 
 especially represents the policy which 
 is due above all to Burns' efforts. But 
 we are not writing a history of the 
 London County Council, which would 
 be necessary if we were to attempt to 
 create a sufficient impression of the 
 work Burns has done upon it. We 
 must mention, however, that most of 
 the principles of his labour policy have 
 been adopted by local authorities in the 
 United Kingdom, and where they have 
 done so it has been to Burns that 
 they have applied for advice and 
 assistance. It is in his unobtrusive 
 way that most of Burns' work has 
 been done. With all his fine gifts of 
 speech he does not love to hear him- 
 self talk. He has served on an
 
 62 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 enorinous number of committees of 
 the Council. For nine years he had 
 an average of one for every day of the 
 year except Sunday, making in all 
 3000 attendances; and he attended, in 
 addition, endless sub-committees not 
 recorded. But in most cases he did 
 not move the resolutions which owed 
 their origin to him. He has always 
 preferred to be king-maker rather than 
 king. As he has said in an election 
 address, the work done by him was so 
 detailed, so persistent, and so absorbing, 
 that it defies expression, baffles descrip- 
 tion. As work of this kind often does, 
 it made Burns an enthusiast for the 
 object of his devotion. He will quote 
 of those early days — 
 
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 
 But to be young was very heaven. 
 
 When, later, he entered Parliament, 
 and saw the inefficiency of that body in
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 63 
 
 transacting business, and the great 
 need of administrative supervision, it 
 was to the County Council that his 
 mind reverted for a model. In his 
 parhamentary address of last year he 
 said that the supervision by com- 
 mittees of the House of Commons, 
 composed of able, experienced, and 
 disinterested men, irrespective of their 
 party politics, is the only way by 
 which the taxpayer can get value 
 for his money, the official justice, 
 and the country that publicity that 
 always makes for good government 
 and efficient administration. Under 
 this system a society clique could no 
 longer dominate the War Office; 
 merit, experience, competency, and 
 courage would count for promotion; and 
 the non-commissioned officer would 
 have his opportunity, the rank and file 
 that proper treatment which modern 
 conditions demand, and must be
 
 64 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 conceded, if a voluntary army is to 
 be maintained. 
 
 As a municipal statesman, then, 
 John Burns achieved a triumphant 
 success as far as the times and condi- 
 tions in which he worked allowed. It 
 would really be difficult to exaggerate 
 the effect his personality, his speeches, 
 his principles, his zeal and vigour had 
 in shaping the course taken by the 
 Council in its early years, and in deter- 
 mining the direction it was to take for 
 the future. We cannot dwell on other 
 people's work, and of course Burns is 
 only one man ; but what we are entitled 
 to insist on is, that much of the new 
 spirit of the Council had been brought 
 in from the street by John Burns ; that 
 he was a unique force in an assembly 
 which, without him, would have lacked 
 much of the impetus he gave to it. Jf 
 he had been a mere windy demagogue 
 and not a man of solid abilities ; if he
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 65 
 
 had not had knowledge; if his manners 
 had not enabled him to mix as a man 
 of the world with men of the world; 
 if his speech had been uncouth, or he 
 had lost in the strife with difficulties 
 and poverty his good temper; if he had 
 become soured, morose, irreconcilable, 
 fierce, snarling, and altogether socially 
 impossible, then he would have stulti- 
 fied and ruined his own cause, and the 
 London County Council would have 
 known him no more after 1892, nor 
 the House of Commons in 1895 and 
 since; and both assemblies, and the 
 people whose interests he has served 
 there with single aim, would have had 
 to trust to imagination for an ideal of 
 working-class representation, which 
 John Burns has come very near 
 realising. 
 
 In August, 1889, began what is still 
 looked on as the most significant and 
 important struggle between workmen
 
 66 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 and their employers that had ever 
 taken place. It seemed as if in that 
 year the labour distresses of the last 
 five years had come to a head, and the 
 Dockers represented in their persons 
 and quarrel with the companies that 
 very cause of the unemployed with 
 which Burns had become identified. 
 For they were a disorganised and a too 
 numerous mass, struggling in fierce 
 competition for casual labour, paid at 
 low rates for long hours, and constantly 
 on the verge of starvation through the 
 uncertainty of their employment. If 
 anything could be done for them there 
 was hope for other classes. Unionism 
 and strikes were the resources of the 
 higher classes of workpeople. Could 
 that method be applied to the Dockers? 
 That was the question Bums had to 
 answer when he was called to direct 
 the strike that the Dockers had at last 
 resolved upon. We have already
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 6^ 
 
 mentioned Burns' work amongst them; 
 his attempts to rouse this "forlorn army 
 of labour." In this exceptional case he 
 had set himself deliberately to make 
 them revolt. In other cases he had 
 never urged strikes, and his assistance 
 was only given to men who had taken 
 their resolution independently of him. 
 In his view strikes are a hateful neces- 
 sity of the industrial competition which 
 Socialism would abolish. He says — 
 *' There are moments in every strike 
 when one asks if it be really worth 
 while — if it be not better that the 
 labourer should be let alone to take 
 his accustomed dole, and eke it out 
 from day to day as he had been used 
 to do. This is a foolish sentiment, 
 which half an hour of cool reflection 
 disposes of. Every faith must have 
 its martyrs, and every victory its slain." 
 Another characteristic thought of Burns' 
 comes out in certain remarks on the
 
 68 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 moral characteristics of the Dockers. 
 He says the Dockers were neither 
 degraded nor loafers. "There is no 
 'strike' in the loafer. It is a fool's 
 mission to preach revolt to him. It is 
 the task of the Priests of Baal trying 
 to call down fire from heaven; of Don 
 Quixote seeking to make a Knight 
 Errant of Sancho Panza. The coals 
 we blew upon were working men, 
 oppressed and beaten down, but 
 working men still who had it in them 
 to struggle and to fight for their daily 
 bread. Is it the loafer by trade, do 
 you think, who is willing to shiver for 
 hours under the dock gates in the 
 black gelidity of a December morning 
 for the chance of a shilling's worth of 
 work, and work that needs as much 
 muscle as will? I have seen dock 
 hands fighting for the gates like people 
 tussling in the passages of a burning 
 theatre; the fierce physical energy
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 69 
 
 (moral inspiration apart) which the 
 chronic loafer, even if he would, is 
 powerless to exert." 
 
 It is easy to conceive with such a 
 case, and an advocate who could speak 
 for them in language like that just 
 quoted, that public sympathy, if it were 
 possible to rouse it at all, would be 
 stirred up on behalf of the Dockers. 
 In fact, never before or since did the 
 outside public follow a labour contest 
 with such intense interest. It seemed 
 like the challenge of the labour market 
 to capitalism throughout the world. 
 This partly accounted for the support 
 the strike received, and also for the 
 deep hostility it aroused amongst the 
 classes, who saw in it a conspiracy 
 financed by revolutionaries and foreign 
 Socialists. Enormous subscriptions 
 came in all through the summer, till the 
 strike ended in October with the sub- 
 mission of the Dock Companies to the
 
 70 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 demands of the "Dockers' Tanner," 
 and the reorganisation of labour in the 
 docks under such conditions of hours 
 and terms of regular employment as 
 put an end to casual employment and 
 gave the men a substantial position. 
 Burns and his friends — Mr. Ben Tillett 
 and Mr. Champion — in short, achieved 
 for them what Burns had already 
 achieved for the employes of the 
 County Council. During that time 
 food had to be found for 250,000 per- 
 sons every day. No difficulty arose 
 about money ; but the organisation of 
 the relief was a mighty task, undertaken 
 by committees which sat day and 
 night. " Had ours been a Mansion 
 House appeal," said Burns, "on behalf 
 of the sufferers by some sudden great 
 disaster at home or abroad, it could not 
 have been responded to with more ex- 
 travagant generosity." Australia alone 
 sent j^25,ooo. As to the "foreign
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 7 1 
 
 Socialist" contributions, he says they 
 did not exceed £ioo. Most remark- 
 able of all, when we recollect the scenes 
 in Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square, the 
 strike began and ended without dis- 
 order. That was the pride ahke of 
 Cardinal Manning (who ultimately 
 acted as mediator in the quarrel) and 
 of Burns. The latter said he had been 
 in the thick of starving men, with hun- 
 dreds of pounds about him (they know- 
 ing it), and not a penny had he lost. 
 He had sent men whom he did not 
 know for change for a gold piece, and 
 had never been cheated of a penny; 
 nor through all the weeks had he ever 
 been asked for drink money. 
 
 It would be impossible here to say 
 more about Burns and this great strike, 
 in which he was the most conspicuous 
 figure, except that he henceforth became 
 the undisputed chief of that socialistic 
 trade unionism known as the New
 
 72 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P, 
 
 Unionism, which for some years carried 
 dismay into the ranks of the older 
 societies, as the records of the Trades 
 Union Congress show, and has very con- 
 siderably affected their action towards 
 political questions. We can only 
 mention that Burns' connection with 
 the Congresses, of which he had been 
 a member of the Parliamentary Com- 
 mittee, ceased in 1895 when at Cardiff 
 he carried the self-denying ordinance 
 by which all persons not engaged in 
 wage labour were excluded Jrom the 
 Congress. In the previous year he 
 had been sent by the Congress to visit 
 the American Trade Unionists. He 
 has no words strong enough to express 
 his abhorrence of American plutocracy 
 and the corruption of municipal life 
 there ; and his description of Chicago 
 as ** a pocket edition of hell " is a 
 phrase that even he, with all his 
 energy of expression, would have
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 73 
 
 some difficulty in making more 
 vigorous. 
 
 About three years after the Dock 
 Strike his Battersea supporters sent 
 him with all the prestige of his labour 
 leadership and of his work on the 
 County Council to represent them in 
 Parliament. That was in 1892. Again, 
 in 1895, h^ ^^'^s returned; and for the 
 third time to the Parliament that 
 met on 3rd December, 1900. What 
 v.'as, on this last occasion, a nar- 
 row escape from losing the seat v/as 
 due to the uncompromising hostility 
 which he has shown to the Government 
 in their management of South African 
 affairs since the troubles began. Capital- 
 ism appears to him incarnate in the 
 l)erson of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, and Mr. 
 Chamberlain is his "pliant instrument." 
 It is unnecessary to describe what 
 speeches a man like John Burns would 
 make who holds these opinions.
 
 74 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 Battersea was not less enthusiastic for 
 the war than were most other constitu- 
 encies, but Burns claims that, though 
 five months before the election he 
 would have lost his seat from that 
 cause, yet when he got to his constitu- 
 ents, and began to speak to them from 
 the local platforms, he converted a 
 majority of enemies into a majority of 
 friends. To describe Burns, however, 
 as a "Little Englander" would be 
 more absurd than the usual absurdity 
 of that vulgar reproach. In a long 
 conversation that he had with Mr. 
 Cecil Rhodes, the latter said — 
 *'Well, Mr. Burns, I am surprised to 
 find you are not a Little Englander; 
 but I don't know what you would do 
 with me if you had me in your power." 
 **Oh," replied Bums, "I can easily 
 tell you that. I would put you with 
 your back against a wall and fill you 
 up with lead ! "
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 75 
 
 Burns' career in Parliament has been 
 marked by all the qualities which he 
 displayed in other scenes, but he has 
 not had the special opportunities of 
 distinction that the County Council 
 aftbrded him. Personally, he has been 
 more than usually successful as a 
 speaker, and one might say that he is 
 even a distinguished member of the 
 House, as he certainly is one of the 
 most popular ; but he has been 
 hampered, as all private members are, 
 by the tendency of legislative initiative 
 to fall more and more into the hands 
 of the Government. If he has not had 
 the opportunity, as he had on the 
 County Council, of showing his great 
 abilities as an administrator, and the 
 talents that the municipal revolution 
 in London called forth, he has yet 
 carried on strenuously the work that 
 was then begun. He did not go into 
 Parliament with the intention of turning
 
 76 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 political events to account for the pur- 
 pose of personal ambition, but to work 
 at a certain programme of economical 
 questions as the representative of the 
 interests of the working classes. Hence 
 we do not think of John Burns as a 
 politician using the ordinary political 
 artifices that lead to personal success. 
 To that duty of his he has been faith- 
 ful, and he has lent his powerful aid or 
 set his equally powerful opposition 
 against all proposals which make for or 
 are contrary to the ideals of which we 
 have spoken. It would be too long a 
 story to go through his speeches in the 
 House to illustrate this, but let us take 
 one of last year's to show what influence 
 on countless subjects Burns exercises 
 over legislation. 
 
 The occasion was the consideration 
 of the London Water Bill for pur- 
 chasing the companies and bringing 
 v/ater from Wales. We take the
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 77 
 
 account from the Ma?ichester Guardian 
 of March last. " In the impatient 
 House rose Mr. John Burns to plead 
 for London. . . . His sentences 
 are not well rounded, but every now 
 and again an epigram flashes out on 
 you like the lightning from a cloud. 
 The hum of the House ceases and all 
 are still. And then in blow after blow 
 came the sledge-hammer sentences, 
 rugged, rough-hewn, and often unjoin- 
 ed, but always genuine, asserting, 
 original, true. There is a touch of 
 Walt Whitman in the free strength of 
 the phrases, of Cobbett in the boldness 
 of the passionate advocacy. You will 
 say that he draws from deep wells of 
 strength, and the House of Commons 
 in spite of itself is held riveted, en- 
 thralled. . . . He sweeps aside the 
 sophistry and cunning of self-interest : 
 he stated the people's case. 'We want 
 our water from cloudland,' he cried,
 
 7© MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 *and not from a vast sewage-infected 
 area. You will not remedy this evil until 
 you have an epidemic in the West-End, 
 just as you did not put down garrotting 
 until a member of the House was 
 garrotted at the Duke of York's 
 Column.' " 
 
 This is an admirable account of his 
 power and position in the House, and 
 of his eloquence. A m.ember like him 
 is far from being an ordinary member, 
 and Mr. Chamberlain's recent sneer at 
 Labour members loses its point if 
 directed at John Burns. 
 
 We can hardly close even this im- 
 perfect sketch without mentioning 
 some of the items of Burns' political 
 creed which belong to more general 
 politics. He has a clever phrase about 
 the legislation of the present Govern- 
 ment: "It has passed labels and 
 called them Acts of Parliament" 
 Here are some of John Bums'
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 79 
 
 *' labels " which have not been passed, 
 but which have figured steadily in 
 his election addresses from the first: 
 — Home Rule for Ireland; Payment of 
 ^Members and Election Expenses; Adult 
 Man and Woman Suffrage, with 
 Electoral Reform ; Triennial Parlia- 
 ments; Abolition of the House of 
 Lords; Disestablishment of the Church; 
 Old Age Pensions (" The Government's 
 abandonment of Old Age Pensions is 
 a cruel betrayal of the veterans of 
 industry — a treachery to the thrifty, a 
 cowardly desertion of the weak ") ; 
 Direct Veto and Local Option. 
 
 John Burns is now a man of only 
 forty- two years of age, and he is in 
 his third Parliament. We wonder 
 when, how, and by whom, and what 
 age Burns will be before this pro- 
 gramme is accomplished ; not to men- 
 tion that further developed Socialism 
 which is in the background. But that
 
 8o MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 he will do his full share towards it, 
 and have a fine record at the end, there 
 is no doubt.
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 8 1 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Review and Forecast : What will Burns 
 Do Next?— The Needs of the Radicals 
 — Burns a Possible Leader. 
 
 What impresses us most when we think 
 quietly over the career of John Burns is, 
 that it is a record of accomplishment in 
 the art of leadership and the achieve- 
 ment of a practical programme to which 
 there is no parallel in the England of 
 this generation, with the exception of 
 the career of Mr. Chamberlain. It 
 seems also that we ought to consider 
 that we are not speaking of a career 
 which is closed, but of one not more 
 than in midway. 
 
 The interest we feel in a man 
 of forty-two, who has already done 
 great things, is in speculating on what 
 he will do next. If he were a poli- 
 tician of independent means, either an 
 
 V
 
 $2 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 ambitious manufacturer or a member 
 of any of those families who take to 
 politics as a profession, and had suc- 
 ceeded during his eight years of parlia- 
 mentary life in impressing upon his 
 party and the country — as in fact he has 
 done — the consciousness of his rare gifts 
 for public affairs, there would be no 
 limit to the possibilities that his future 
 would afford. 
 
 Naturally he would come to the front 
 as the leader of his party. Taken just 
 as he is, he is qualified to head any 
 party contemplating radical changes in 
 the conditions of social and political 
 life. It is ridiculous to suppose other- 
 wise, knowing what he is as a speaker 
 either arousing enthusiasm and passion 
 on the platform, or deliberating on com- 
 mittees, or in the municipal council, or 
 in Parliament. Suppose we descend to 
 details. He is as well read and learned 
 in the ordinary scholastic sense as some
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, IM.P. S;^ 
 
 men of this generation who at the Enr 
 have made ;^io,ooo a year, and in the 
 sense of a wide acquaintance with the 
 literature and learning that statesmen 
 should have, incomparably morelearned. 
 Let anyone glance round his library at 
 Lavender Hill and talk to him of books, 
 pictures, music, architecture, the sciences 
 and the arts, with which the ordinary 
 "well-educated" person is extremely 
 imperfectly acquainted. His conversa- 
 tion will charm you on such subjects, and 
 if you are a university man you will leave 
 him somewhat out of conceit with your- 
 self, and with none of that self-com- 
 placency that the academically trained 
 man so often feels in contemplating the 
 '* self-educated " man. 
 
 There could be no greater mistake 
 than to have the notion that Burns is 
 "rather a good fellow for a working 
 man, don't-you-know, very intelligent, 
 a good specimen of his class, shows
 
 84 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 what mechanics' institutes and night 
 schools can do for serious young work- 
 ing men," and so on. A man of Burns' 
 type is neither turned out by mechanics' 
 institutes nor by the university. Carlyle, 
 in speaking of Robert Burns* social 
 success in the learned society of Edin- 
 burgh, said the philosophers were con- 
 siderably astonished to find that he 
 could talk to them about the " associa- 
 tion of ideas '* and of a great many 
 other things that they themselves were 
 not so well acquainted with. The best 
 head in England, further said Carlyle, 
 and they could do nothing more than 
 make an exciseman of him. We con- 
 fess there is some difficulty in knowing 
 what the Tory Party could have done 
 more with satisfactory results to them- 
 selves for the revolutionary Robert 
 Burns ; but in days when a Radical 
 Party, if it has a programme, has no 
 man of sufficient ability and character
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 85 
 
 to lead them, it does seem that they 
 might manage to make more use of the 
 most able man in their ranks than they 
 have hitherto done. They need not 
 be ashamed of such a leader; but the 
 truth is, they are as conventional in 
 tlieir ideas as if they were Conservatives, 
 or Liberal-Unionists, or Imperialists, 
 or old Liberals, or any other variety 
 of multi-hued Liberalism, and they 
 will not be ha{)py unless they can 
 follow a " gentleman," a baronet, or at 
 least a university man. John Burns 
 knows better than any man the snob- 
 bery of the working classes and the 
 snobbery of Radicals, and he knows 
 that it is they that always stand as an 
 obstruction in the way of such men as 
 he is, unless their lot happens to 
 be cast in times when society is 
 being revolutionised by extraordinary 
 methods. Then they come to the 
 front — they get their chance, because
 
 86 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 the conventionalities have had to give 
 way and everybody wants a man who 
 can lead. 
 
 It is when new things have been on 
 foot that Burns, as we have seen, has 
 had what chances have happened to 
 him, and he has come to the front by 
 virtue of his own strength. The Radi- 
 cal programme is at a stand because 
 Radicals are expecting impossible co- 
 operation from official Liberalism, or it 
 may be even because there is no Radical 
 programme and very few Radicals. 
 But granting the existence of both, we 
 cannot conceive that either would be 
 better suited than with John Burns as 
 exponent and leader. He is ideal. We 
 have dwelt on his personal qualifications ; 
 and there is no doubt of his Radical- 
 ism. The danger of Radicalism when 
 a rich demagogue leads it is that it will 
 be sold at the point where the rich 
 man's interest and Radicalism conflict
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 87 
 
 John Burns has so shaped and ordered 
 his Hfe, or it has been so shaped and 
 ordered, that he is inconceivable as a 
 parvenu aspiring to change his social 
 status. What lies beyond his Radical- 
 ism is not a social vista in which he 
 sees himself a member of a privileged 
 class as the reward of his ambition, but 
 a vista of Socialism more levelling than 
 even Radicals may care for. That may 
 prejudice them against Burns' leader- 
 ship ; yet his Socialism, from his 
 point of view, would be no obstacle, 
 for many items of the Radical pro- 
 gramme would be taken naturally in the 
 stride of the Socialist leader, and Burns 
 has acted with the Radicals. Some 
 Conservatives have views of Socialism 
 that they believe can be accomplished 
 by means of the Conservative Party. 
 When Burns has seen proposals by 
 them that were consistent with his 
 views he has supported them — the
 
 88 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 Workmen's Compensation Act, for ex- 
 ample. But the Radical programme is, 
 as far as it goes, the programme of 
 Burns. Radicals are to be found, if 
 anywhere, amongst the working classes, 
 and Socialists, as John Burns under- 
 stands them, are also to be found there; 
 and who is there of all public men to- 
 day who so understands working men 
 as John Burns does ? Our fear is that 
 the working men do not sufficiently 
 understand John Burns. If it were not 
 for their snobbery and timidity and 
 suspicion, the prejudices they have 
 against the leadership of men of their 
 own class, they would see in him some- 
 thing more than a strike leader and 
 expert on labour questions, and hail 
 him as their natural party leader. Since 
 tiie days of Gladstone, Cobden, and 
 Bright they have had none to stir their 
 enthusiasm so much, nor who would 
 be so capable of doing it, if only he
 
 MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 89 
 
 weie as much their social as he is their 
 intellectual superior ; if only he carried 
 on a big business and had made a big 
 fortune. 
 
 It is not the hate of the classes 
 to which he is opposed that makes 
 the hindrances to the further step 
 in John Burns' career which we should 
 be interested in seeing him take, but 
 the non-appreciation of his greater 
 qualities that his friends are too unin- 
 telligent to understand. Suspicion of 
 personal motives on the part of a man 
 of their own class aspiring to take 
 part in public life has always been a 
 characteristic of the working classes. 
 They resent a superiority which has no 
 hereditary claims. As long as John 
 Burns is in public life he will do 
 useful work, he will shrink from no 
 drudgery ; but we hope that circum- 
 stances, and his own talents and ambi- 
 tion, will yet open up a way to higher
 
 9© MR. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
 distinction than he has yet achieved ; 
 and our estimate of him is very much 
 astray if he does not in the future, as 
 he has done in the past, create his own 
 chances. 
 
 J tinted by uenry J. Dram, i'e- i>aint Bride's Presse,
 
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