Industrial Democracy. Sidney Webb
in which the "sovereignty of
Representative Institution!! 69
This may at first seem to indicate a return of the pro- fessional representative to the position of a delegate. Trade Union experi ence points, however, to the very reverse. In the grggit ^majority of cases a constituency cannot be said to have any clear and decided views on particular*^ projects. What th ey ask from their representative is that he shal l act in the manner which, in his opinion, will best serve to promote the irgeneral desires. It is only in particular instances, usually when some well-intentioned proposal entails im- mediately inconvenient results, that a wave of decided opinion spreads through a working-class constituency. It is exactly in cases of this kind that a propagandist campaign by a professional debater, equipped with all the facts, is of the greatest utility. Such a campaign would be the very last thing that a member of Parliament of the present type would venture upon if he thought that his constituents were against him. He would feel that the less the points of difference were made prominent, the better for his own.- safety. But once it came to be under^bod that the final command of the constituency would beWobeyed, the repre- sentative would run no risk of losing his seat, merely because he did his best to convert his constituents. Judging from^ Trade Union experience he would, in nine cases out Cff Ten, succeed~in converting them to His own view, and thus perform a valuable ~peeg" of "political education. In the tenth " case the campaigri would have been no less educa- tional, though in another way ; and, whichever was the fight view, the issue would have been made clear, the facts brought out, and the way opened for the eventual conversion of one or other of the contending parties.
Trade Union experience indicates, therefore, a still further development in the evolution of the representative. Working-
the people " has been most whole-heartedly accepted, the Trade Union practice prevails. The members of the Swiss " Bundesrath " (Federal Cabinet) do not resign when any project is disapproved of by the legislature, nor do the members of the " Nationalrath " throw up their legislative functions when a measure is rejected by the electors on Referendum. Both cabinet ministers and legislators set themselves to carry out the popular will.
70 Trade Union Structure
class democracy will expect him not only to be able to understand and interpret the desires of his electors, and effectively to direct and control the administrating executive : he must also count it as part of his duty to be the experjt parliamentary adviser of his constituency, and at times an active propagandist of his own advice. Thus, if any inference from Trade Union history is valid in the larger sphere, the whole tendency of working-class democracy will unconsciously be to exalt the real power of the representative, and more and more to differentiate his functions from those of the ordinary citizen on the one hand, and of the expert admini- strator on the other. The typical representative assembly of the future will, it may be suggested, be as far removed from the House of Commons of to-day as the latter is from the mere Delegate Meeting. We have already travelled far from the one man taken by rotation from the roll, and changed mechanically to convey " the voices " of the whole body. We may in the future leave equally behind the member to whom wealth, position, or notoriety secures, almost by accident, a seat in Parliament, in which he can, in such intervals as his business or pleasure may leave him, decide what he thinks best for the nation, fin his stead we may watch appearing in 'increasing numbers t he pro fessional representative—a man selected for natural aptitude, delibgrately trained for his new~- work as a special vocation, devoting his whole time to the discharge of his manifold duties, and actively maintaining an intimate and reciprocal intellectual relationship with his constituency.
How far such a development of the representative will fit in with the party system as we now know it ; how far it will increase the permanence and continuity of parliamentary life ; how far it will promote collective action and tend to increasing bureaucracy ; how far, on the other hand, it will bring the ordinary man into active political citizenship, and rehabilitate the House of Commons in popular estimation ; how far, therefore, it will increase the real authority of the people over the representative assembly, and of the repre-
Representative Institutions 71
sentative assembly over the permanent civil service ; how far, in fine, it will give us that combination of administrative efficiency with popular control which is at once the requisite and the ideal of all democracy—all these are questions that make the future interesting.
CHAPTER III THE UNIT OF GOVERNMENT
The trade clubs of the eighteenth century inherited from the Middle Ages the tradition of strictly localised corpora- tions, the unit of government necessarily coinciding, like that of the English craft gild, with the area of the particular city in which the members lived. And we can well imagine that a contemporary observer of the constitution and policy of these little democracies might confidently have predicted that they, like the craft gilds, must inevitably remain strictly localised bodies. The crude and primitive form of popular government to which, as we have seen, the workmen were obstinately devoted, could only serve the needs of a small and local society. Government by general meeting of all fee members, administration by the forced service of indi- viduals taken in rotation from the roll—in short, the ideal of each member taking an equal and identical share in the management of public affairs—was manifestly impracticable in any but a society of which the members met each other with the frequent intimacy of near neighbours. Yet in spite of all difficulties of constitutional machinery, the historian watches these local trade clubs, in marked contrast with the craft gilds, irresistibly expanding into associations of national extent. Thus, the little friendly club which twenty -three Bolton ironfounders established in 1809 spread steadily over the whole of England, Ireland, and Wales, until to-day it numbers over 1 6,000 members, dispersed among 122 separate
The Unit of Government 73
branches. The scores of little clubs of millwrights apd steam-engine makers, fitters and blacksmiths, as if impelled by some overmastering impulse, drew together between 1 840 and 1 85 1 to form the great Amalgamated Society of Engineers. The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (established i860) has, in the thirty-five years of its existence, absorbed several dozens of local carpenters' .'societies, and now counts within its ranks four-fifths of the organised carpenters in the kingdom. . Finally, we see organisations established, like the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in 1872, with the deliberate intention of covering the whole trade from one end of the kingdom to the other. How slowly, painfully, and reluctantly the workmen have modified their crude ideas of democracy to meet the exigencies of a national organisation, we have already described.
But it was not merely the workman's simplicity in matters N of government that hampered the growth of National organisa- tion. The traditional policy of the craftsman of the English town—the restriction of the right to work j^o those who had acquired the " freedom " of the corporation, the determined exclusion of " interlopers," and the craving to keep trade from going out of the town—has left deep roots in English industrial life, alike among the shopkeepers and among th&, workmen. Trade Unionism has had constantly to struggle against this spirit of local monopoly, specially noticeable in the seaport towns.^ , ^—
Down to the middle of the present century the ship- wrights had an independent local club in every port, each of which strove with might and main to exclude from any chance of work in the port all but men who had learnt their trade within its bounds. These monopoly rules caused incessant friction between the men of the several ports. Shipwrights out of work in one town could not perma- nently be kept away from another in which more hands were
1 It is interesting to note that the modern forms of the monopoly spirit are also specially characteristic of the industry of shipbuilding ; see the chapter on " The Right to a Trade."
VOL. I D 2
74 Trade Union Strtuture
wanted. The newcomers, refused admission into the old port society, eventually formed a new local union among them- selves, and