the Labour Party

At the General Election in May 1929 the Labour Party was again returned to office, Mr. MacDonald being invited to form a ministry on June 5, but this time its position was very much stronger than in 1924. While not in an actual majority, it was for the first time the largest party in the House (287 members).

Constitutional Position.

Opinion in the industrial and po litical movements of Labour has always shown a pendulum swing between one side and another. Before the War syndicalism was growing in Great Britain. In France, its country of origin, its doctrines were laid down by G. Sorel in his Re flexions sur la Violence (19I2),and elaborated in a series of books and pamphlets written by members of the Confederation General du Travail; in America, De Leon, a disciple of Marx, preached a similar doc trine, and the Industrial Workers of the World, a rival to the American Federation of Labor, was founded to enforce it. The influence of these doctrines was felt in Great Britain, and was reflected in the literature of the time, which consisted largely in defences of the parliamentary position and of political as against direct industrial action. Looking back upon those years,

one finds the beginnings of what later on has become known as Bolshevism. Upon the philosophy of "the inevitable revolution" the Russian Social Democratic Party split (1903) into two schools which were to make history by the two revolutions of March and Nov. 1917. In the year preceding the outbreak of war, the pendulum had begun to swing back towards a belief in political action, and syndicalism had evidently gone beyond its zenith.

Post-war conditions gave rise to much communist agitation which caused internal trouble to the party. At its annual confer ence at Liverpool in 1925, Communism was signally defeated. Since then the trouble has diminished, though the General Strike and the dispute in the mining industry (1926) added to the in ternal ferment; but at Blackpool (1927) the Liverpool policy was supported by overwhelming majorities. In 1931 the Labour op position in parliament numbered only 52, but this was increased to 154 in (J. R. M.)