My Father

"Grandpa" George Lansbury, white-whiskered old Laborite, stared at the ceiling of a London hospital room while the 75-year-old leg he broke last December by falling downstairs healed slowly, painfully. Still buzzing in his head was his noble notion: "Conditions are bad, not men." But last week when George's Son Edgar published a book called My Father, it was of men, not conditions that he spoke. In fact, Son Edgar threw open the door on the bitter meetings of that unhappy Labor Cabinet in which George Lansbury was First Commissioner of Works. In so doing he violated the British taboo that Cabinet discussions are sacred. Edgar had consulted neither the King nor the Prime Minister. George V did not much care. But Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald cared very much. The Government banned My Father and the publishers withdrew it to cut out the Cabinet memoranda. Omitted from the new edition was the inside story of Lansbury's fight in the early days of Depression to force the Labor Cabinet to stand by the Party's "Socialist pledges in behalf of the workers." Lined up against him were the three Laborites who finally made common cause with the Conservatives and survived Labor's great fall in 1931: MacDonald, Philip Snowden and James Henry ("Jim") Thomas. The two factions in the Cabinet split wide on Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley's plan to break unemployment by huge public works plans. Old George was for it; the Three against it. They split wider on unemployment insurance payments. Snowden, speaking of "treasury difficulties and impaired credit," favored increasing the premiums or reducing the benefits. Old George wanted neither. He told Snowden: "I never have been able to understand treasury economics. ... I can't see that -L-20 taken from a rich man and given to 20 poor men means a loss of business. . . . Let's call for sacrifices all round. Instead of starting with the weak and hopeless--that is, the unemployed down-&-outs--let's start at the top . . . unless we are willing to say, 'Let them starve.'" Not long afterward the Cabinet split mortally and foundered. Down went most of Labor. Up went the Three. Old George, largely because he had built so many orange-colored bath houses in his home district, managed to get reelected. But as far as Labor was concerned, he had spoken his piece. Other men led Labor's great victory last week in London while Old George looked at the ceiling.

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