The Dock Strike of 1889—"Our Dock Strike Baby"—At the Point of Death—Discouraging a Missioner—Before a House of Lords Committee—Entrance upon Public Life—A Widower with Six Children—Second Marriage.
The great Dock Strike of 1889 nearly brought Crooks to his grave. Much of the brunt and burden of that famous struggle fell upon his shoulders. Months before, he had prepared the way by his Dock Gate meetings. When at last the disorganised bands of dock and river-side labourers startled the industrial world by standing together as one man for better conditions of work and a minimum wage of sixpence an hour, Will Crooks was one of the half-dozen Labour Leaders who directed the campaign to its historic triumph.
Seldom, while the strike lasted, did he take his clothes off. He worked at his own trade during the day and gave nearly the whole of the night to the strikers. The outdoor meetings he addressed kept him going up to midnight. The early morning hours saw him lending a hand at the organising offices and relief stations until the dawn called him to his ordinary daily work again.
There were times when he gave both day and night to the dockers, preferring to lose time at his own work rather than miss an opportunity of lending a hand to his less fortunate fellows. Sometimes he would accompany the men in their demonstrations through the City and the West-End.
Those daily marches of the dock labourers opened London's eyes. The orderliness of the ragged battalions, headed by "the man in the straw hat," who was afterwards to take a seat in the Cabinet—John Burns—was as impressive as their numbers. They were forbidden to use bands of music in the City streets, so the men conceived the ingenious device of whistling. It had a curious effect, some fifty thousand men whistling the "Marseillaise" all the way from Aldgate to Temple Bar.
When Crooks did get home for an hour or two in the evening it was not to rest, but to sit by the bedside of his ailing wife and tend the youngest of his children. Ill though his wife was, little though she saw of him during the strike, she urged him from her sick bed to keep on helping the dockers.
"Don't mind me, Will," she told him, when he would peep in anxiously after many hours' absence. "I shall be all right if you can only pull those poor dockers through."
He came in one night after nearly two days' absence, having arranged to spend the whole of that evening by her bedside. She had just given birth to a son—"our Dock Strike baby," as he came to be called for long afterwards, now a promising apprentice in a Thames shipbuilding yard. She was very happy at the good news he brought of the progress of the strike. She was happier still at the prospect of his being spared for his first evening at home. Presently the sound of hurrying footsteps was heard in the street. Something important had happened. The men wanted Will Crooks. Would he come again?
He looked at his wife. She must decide.
"Go, Will," she said. "Never let it be said your wife kept you from helping those in need."
The reaction came after the victory. When the dockers in their thousands were back at work rejoicing at having won their sixpence an hour, Crooks lay at the point of death in the London Hospital in Whitechapel Road. It was the first time he had been ill in his life. Friends feared this first illness was to be his last. Not until after a struggle of thirteen weeks could he be pronounced out of danger.
He is fond of telling this incident that occurred in the hospital:—
"When I was approaching convalescence, and naturally fairly happy at the thought of soon being able to get out and return home, a missioner, as I think he was called, came to see me as I lay in bed in the hospital. He said to me quite bluntly, 'Are you not a miserable sinner?'
"I said: 'No; I may be a sinner, but I am not a miserable one just now.'
"The missioner left my side in disgust, and then returned and asked to be allowed to send me a Testament. I consented, and received in a day or two one marked in several places with red ink, apparently intended to impress upon me what a depraved and miserable creature I was.
"The missioner called again, and questioned me as to whether I had read the marked passages and what I thought of them.
"I told him that, as applied to me, they were not true.
"I shall never forget the look I received, and I expect I was given up as a lost man.
"A few minutes after he had left my ward a patient from another ward came to see me, and said:—
"'I say, Twenty-five, that's the way to get rid of them.'
"I said, 'What have you done to get rid of him?'
"'Oh,' he answered. 'The missioner said, "Are you not a miserable sinner?" and I said "Yes"; and then he said, "Thank God for that," and went away.'"
Soon after Crooks came out of the hospital he made his first appearance in a public capacity in Parliament. He was invited on July 11th, 1890, to give evidence before the Committee of the House of Lords on the Infant Life Insurance Bill. It was seriously argued at the time that working class parents deliberately neglected their children for the sake of the insurance money. The Bill actually proposed that the insurance money be kept out of the hands of the parents altogether and paid to the undertaker. The offending clause disappeared after Crooks's evidence.
The Evening News, which headed its report of the day's proceedings "A Working Man shows the Weak Points in the New Bill," summarised what Crooks told the Committee thus:—
A journeyman cooper from Poplar, evidently a thoroughly straightforward and independent working-man of more than average intelligence and facility of expression, gave evidence yesterday before the Committee of the House of Lords, presided over by the Bishop of Peterborough.
He said he objected to the provision in the Bill for the payment of insurance money to the undertaker. It was not merely to cover the actual expenses of burial that the working man insured his child, but to provide "black" and to meet other unavoidable expenses. If insurance were abolished workmen would be obliged to fall back on the old practice of "Friendly Leads," which generally led to drinking at public-houses.
He knew thousands of families of working people, and was perfectly certain that there was not among them one mother lacking maternal affection. There was no sacrifice the poor would not make for their children, and it would be felt as a great reproach to say that a child had not been properly cared for. In other cases bad mothers would be bad mothers under any circumstances, and it was for the criminal law to find them out; but if there was one bad in a thousand he did not see why nine hundred and ninety-nine respectable persons should be punished.
To stop child insurance, witness said in reply to Lord Norton, would punish honest parents and do no good whatever.
It was about this time that the working people of Poplar began to urge him to go into public life. They elected him a member of the Poplar Board of Trustees, in regard to which he had recently unearthed a notorious scandal. Then he was made a Library Commissioner in recognition of the prominent part he had taken in persuading Poplar to adopt the Act. Soon afterwards he was returned as one of the two Poplar representatives to the London County Council.
The cloud that had hung over his home all through the Dock Strike was to grow yet darker. He had not been on the County Council many weeks when his wife died. She had barely recovered from the illness that kept her bedfast during the exciting days of the strike. Then there came the three anxious worrying months as her husband lay between life and death in the hospital. The worry wore her out, and a brave God-fearing woman of the people went down to her grave commanding her husband to work on.
Thus, at the commencement of his public career and while still in his thirties, Crooks found himself a widower with six children on his hands, the youngest a baby.
Among the many letters of sympathy that poured in upon him, that which got nearest to his heart came from one whose acquaintance he had but recently made, who described himself as "a fellow sufferer under a like bereavement." The writer was Lord Rosebery, then Chairman of the London County Council.
All that first year of Crooks's public life was gone through while he was bearing heavy burdens at home. His new duties as London County Councillor, the many urgent calls to help the Labour movement in other quarters, now that he was beginning to be known far beyond the bounds of Poplar, kept him away from home often until a late hour. All this added greatly to his domestic cares, since he had to be both mother and father to his children. The eldest daughter, fourteen years of age, managed bravely; but many a night he turned away from addressing the cheering multitude of a crowded, glittering hall and went to a cheerless home to find the youngest children crying. He would help to wash them, to mend their clothes, and to cook for them.
A year's experience convinced him that neither he nor the children could go on in that way. His aged mother rendered all the help her growing infirmities would allow. The old lady, with her married children's aid, now lived in modest comfort in a little house off the High Street. There lodged with her a young nurse engaged at a neighbouring institution, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Lake, a native of Gloucestershire. Crooks laid his case before her. She consented to become his wife and bring up his children. They were married in Poplar Parish Church in 1893.
The union has been a singularly happy one. Mrs. Crooks has done more than bring up the children. She has guided and inspired her husband in all his public life. So much so, that when some eight years later he laid down his robes of office after a successful year as Mayor of Poplar, he stated publicly in acknowledging a presentation to himself and the Mayoress:—
"Without my wife's aid I would have been of little use in my public work. Whenever I return home troubled or anxious, or defeated on some pet scheme, I never have from my wife anything but cheering and encouraging words. She it is who has made my public life possible. She it is who deserves your thanks far more than I."
The Will Crooks Wages Fund formed—The Poplar Labour League—Crooks's Election to the London County Council—Friends outside the Labour Movement—Money no Substitute for Personal Service—Refusing highly-paid Posts—Offer of a House rent-free for Life declined—Not Risen from the Ranks.
How came it that a working man like Crooks was able to give his whole time to public work?
It was simply because his fellow workmen wished it. They went to him in deputation in the early 'nineties, and said to him in effect:—
"Look here, Crooks. You can be more useful to us in public life than at the workman's bench. We want you to stand for the London County Council and some of the local bodies. Give up your work and we'll raise for you from among ourselves an amount equal to your present wages."
To which Crooks replied:—
"All right, mates, since you wish it. But understand! as soon as you tire of me, no grumbling behind my back. Come forward and say so plainly, and I'll go back to the bench at once."
So the Will Crooks Wages Fund was formed by the Poplar Labour League. The first treasurer was the Rev. H. A. Kennedy, of All Hallows', Blackwall. Afterwards the then Rector of Poplar (Dr. Chandler) was invited by the working men to become treasurer of the fund, and he held the office until called away to a Colonial bishopric.
We have seen how the Poplar Labour League came into being. It was one of the first achievements of Crooks's College by the Dock Gates. Originally it was named the Poplar Labour Election Committee. Its first executive consisted of the Rev. H. A. Kennedy and local representatives of the London Trades Council, the Engine Drivers' and Firemen's Union, the Watermen's Society, the Dockers' Union, the Philanthropic Coopers' Society, the East London Plumbers' Union, the Federated Trade and Labour Unions, and the Gasworkers' Union.
The League was one of the pioneers of Labour Representation in this country. Long before the British Labour Party organised the present system of paying its Members of Parliament, this little League in Poplar for an unbroken period of a dozen years had shown how men from the ranks of Labour could be maintained in public life. The League had a motto: "The aim of every workman, whatever his task, whether he labours with axe, chisel, or lathe, loom or last, hammer or pen, hands or head, should be the ideal, the best, the perfect."
The League was successful from the start. Its earliest effort was put forth at the London County Council election of 1892. The result of that effort can be judged from the following remarks in the League's first annual report:—
The return of Will Crooks to the London County Council marks an epoch in the life of industrial Poplar.
From time immemorial this hive of industry has been represented by employers of labour and wealthy capitalists. Their record is now broken. Labour has awakened to a sense of its duty. We hope the awakening will be permanent, and that worthy representatives may be found to fill the vacancies on the various administrative and legislative bodies.
We suggest to all working men's societies that wherever and whenever it is possible they should subscribe to the Labour Member's Wages Fund, for be it remembered that our Member is a representative of all classes and not of one particular individual class; and so long as he retains our confidence it is our duty to support him to our utmost ability.
The response of the trade societies and workmen and friends generally was such that within a few months the League by a unanimous vote decided to raise the Labour Member's wages from £3 to £3 10s. a week to meet his travelling expenses. For the first seven or eight years of his public life that was absolutely the only source of Crooks's income.
The League remained faithful to its early pledge all the time. Through good and ill report, through all the changes and dissensions which such an organisation was bound to cause, the League never once faltered in its support of Crooks. Regularly at its annual meetings the League passed a vote of thanks to "our representative on the L.C.C. for his untiring devotion to Labour's cause and his perseverance in initiating social reform so beneficial to the working classes. They further desire to record their perfect confidence in him and congratulate him on the success of his work."
Many trade societies other than those on the original list became subscribers to the Wages Fund through their local branches. Among them were the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the Stevedores' Labour Protection League, the London Saddle and Harness Makers' Society, the Postmen's Federation, the London Carmen's Trade Union, the Friendly Society of Ironfounders, the Municipal Employees' Association, and the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants.
Certain admirers of Crooks outside the Labour Movement also sent subscriptions to the League for the Wages Fund. Canon and Mrs. Barnett and Dr. Clifford were occasional subscribers; so were Mrs. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Cyril Jackson, Mrs. Ruth Homan, Mr. G. W. E. Russell, Mr. Sidney Webb, Sir Melville Beachcroft, Canon Scott Holland, Mr. Fred Butler, the editors of two or three London newspapers, and both Conservative and Liberal Members of Parliament.
Occasionally working men in distant parts of the country who had heard Crooks speak or watched his public work would send in their mite, generally anonymously. One such contribution, sent during the Woolwich by-election, consisted of four penny stamps, stuck on a torn piece of dirty paper, on which were written the words:—
Will you please except four stamps toward the expens of will Crooks election and may god bless him in being successful in winning the seat for Labour
from a working man.
That was all. Crooks keeps the stamps and the note to this day.
This may be the proper place to make public another fact bearing on his financial position. Many people have sent cheques to him direct, some of these marked for his own personal use, some for helping the poor as he thought best, others containing nothing beyond a brief note without name or address like the following:—
This is sent by a well-wisher, who believes that you are an honest, straightforward fellow with a large heart for those less fortunate than yourself.
Every sum received in this way Crooks has given to the poor. He has neither taken a penny for his own personal use nor allowed a penny to pass into the coffers of the Labour League. In one distressful winter over £300 was thus sent to him and his wife. With the co-operation of a local committee, the whole of this sum was spent in employing out-of-work women and girls in making garments for their needy neighbours. By these means dozens of families were saved from the workhouse.
Crooks discourages those who give money only. "Give part of yourself rather than part of your wealth," he tells them.
He has little sympathy with people who give money and then run away. A person once called at his house during a bad winter and offered him £500.
"I am anxious about the poor people, Mr. Crooks," said the visitor, "so I've brought down this money for you to help them."
"Have you?" was the response. "But what are you going to do?"
"Oh, I'm going to the south of France. I cannot bear England in the winter."
"Then I advise you to take the five hundred pounds with you."
"Do you refuse it?"
"Absolutely. It is cowardly for a man like you to offer five hundred pounds and then run away. You ought to do more than give it; you ought to spend it. Come down and see that the proper people get it. It is not so hard to raise five hundred pounds for the poor as it is to distribute it properly among the poor."
The Labour League did more than send Crooks to the London County Council. It secured representation on the local Poor Law and municipal bodies. It promoted social life as well as public life among the working classes of Poplar. By entertainments, lectures, and excursions it carried brightness and pleasure into the lives of the workmen, their wives, and children. At Christmas time it acted as a kind of Santa Claus to the poorest children of the district. It established a Loan and Thrift Society, which soon had an annual turnover of £2,000. Throughout it all the League never for a moment deserted its Labour Member.
Crooks in his turn remained faithful to the League in face of several alluring offers. The one that tempted him most came from his own trade. Before he quitted the workshop for public life a future managership had been hinted at. He had not been on the County Council more than a few months when a vacancy in his former workshop occurred. At once he was approached and urged to give up the L.C.C.
The post offered him carried with it a salary of £500. He had six children to bring up. There was the uncertainty as to the Labour League being able to keep up the Wages Fund. He pondered over the matter carefully. His decision changed the current of his life. A manager, no matter how sympathetic, could not have remained long in the Labour Movement. Besides, in this case there were hints of a future partnership. Then it was that he decided calmly and deliberately to give his life not to money-making, but to the service of the people. He deliberately chose to remain a poor man in the service of poor men. Having been made to bear so much of the care of this world, he determined that he would know nothing of the deceitfulness of riches.
Nothing has ever shaken him from that decision. From various quarters since then other good offers have come his way. One of them, a Government post, must be regarded as a singular tribute to his worth, since the offer came from a Conservative Cabinet Minister.
The manager of a large firm engaged in carrying out public works to the value of over a million sterling, gave me at the time a frank opinion of Crooks from the employers' standpoint.
"I can't help liking that chap Crooks. But it's a pity he's on what I call the wrong side. He's been negotiating with our firm until he has compelled us to pay our men several thousand pounds a year extra in wages. And a lot of thanks they give him for it! I overhear them sometimes talking at work. They say he wouldn't have got them more money if he hadn't been getting something out of it himself. Now if Crooks would only place his ability on the employers' side he could earn a thousand a year easily."
For ten years after he entered public life Crooks was content with the same five-roomed house in Northumberland Street where the deputation of working men found him when they came to invite him to stand for the County Council. When he did move it was into a neighbouring street, Gough Street, where the upgrown family had the advantage of an additional room. That remains his home to this day.
One of his ardent admirers in Poplar, a well-to-do man, on learning he was moving from Northumberland Street, offered him a house of his own rent free. It was a large and pleasant house in East India Dock Road, boasting a garden front and back. The owner implored him to take it for the rest of his life, "as a small tribute from one who appreciates the splendid public services you have rendered to Poplar."
"It would never do for me to live in such a house," was Crooks's reply in thanking the well-wisher. "My friends among the working people would fear I was deserting their class, and would not come to me as freely as they come now. My enemies would say, 'Look at that fellow Crooks; he's making his pile out of us.' A Labour man like me must leave no opening for his enemies."
We have seen, then, that the only source of Crooks's income during the first years of his public life was the £3 10s. a week paid by the Poplar Labour League. After six or seven years this salary was increased to £4 in view of his greatly widened sphere of public service. This payment was stopped in 1903, when Crooks joined the official Labour Party in the House of Commons. Then he received the usual payment of £200 a year, given to each member of that party by the Trade Unionists of the country. A small additional sum has since been voted to him annually by the Poplar League and the Woolwich Labour Representation Association to meet the out-of-pocket expenses inseparable from a Member of Parliament's life. In addition he has received an occasional fee for a public address.
Let these simple facts, then, be the answer to those people who, surprised at the amount of public work he carries out, keep asking suspiciously how he does it. Crooks himself never hesitates to speak out, either in public or private, as to his financial position.
"How do I do it?" Crooks repeats to his working class audiences. "As a pioneer of paid Labour representation I have been confronted with this question through the whole of my public career. All well and good; but why is the question not put to other politicians and public men? You working men have been the worst offenders. You never think of asking the question of such men seeking public positions as monopolists, food adulterators, scamping contractors, property sweaters, bogus company promoters, and others who fleece you at every turn. You never dream of asking it of young untried men fresh from the Universities, who in many cases are only after the spoils of office. You are inclined to regard all these people as gentlemen. But let a man from your own ranks offer to serve you in public life, and always there are a crowd of objectors, generally thickest at public-house bars, who want to know where the Labour man gets his money from? Talk about the fierce light that beats upon a throne, what is it to the fierce light turned upon a Labour representative?
"How often, as I go about, do I hear of people saying sneeringly: 'Look at that fellow Crooks. Who is he? He's only one of us, who has risen from the ranks.' You just tell these people that Will Crooks has not risen from the ranks; he is still in the ranks, standing four-square with the working classes against monopoly and privilege."
The Labour Bench at the L.C.C.—Its First Party Meeting—The Programme—Crooks's First Speech in the County Hall—The Trade Union Wages Principle Adopted—One of the Master-builders of the New London—Retrospect—Chairman of the Public Control Committee—Keeping an Eye on the Coal Sack—The End of Baby-farming in London.
When Crooks entered the London County Council in 1892 he was a stranger to almost all outside the little circle of Labour men sent up from other divisions.
As a pioneer in Labour representation in London he had more than the usual amount of suspicion and opposition to surmount. In those days a Labour representative was often subjected to fierce personal attacks both from the class he represented and from the better-off classes whose domains for the first time working-men were entering. His every word and act were under a double microscope. He had to be a Spartan in endurance and a saint in character.
"Imagine," he once said to me during his early days on the Council, at the time when one of its members, a peer, was associated with a notorious case in the High Court, "imagine what an outcry there would have been up and down the land if that Councillor, instead of belonging to the House of Lords, had been a Labour representative."
The Labour bench at the County Council set the standard for sound and steady municipal administration to the Labour Party of the entire country. John Burns sat at one end of the bench, Will Crooks at the other. Between them sat, at different times, men like Will Steadman, secretary of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and M.P. for Stepney and later for Central Finsbury; J. Ramsay Macdonald, secretary of the Labour Party and M.P. for Leicester; Isaac Mitchell, then secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions; H. R. Taylor, of the Bricklayers' Society, at one time Mayor of Camberwell; C. W. Bowerman, of the London Society of Compositors and M.P. for Deptford; George Dew, of the Carpenters' and Joiners' Society and secretary of the Workmen's Cheap Trains Association; Harry Gosling, of the Watermen's and Lightermen's Society; and W. Sanders, of the Fabian Society and Independent Labour Party.
Crooks took the minutes of the first party meeting of the Labour Bench, and he holds the document to this day. The meeting was held at the offices of the Dockers' Union in the Mile End Road on April 26th, 1892, a few weeks after the election which first made a L.C.C. Labour Party possible. A line of policy was laid down that looks quite modest to-day, now that it has become an integral part of ordinary L.C.C. administration. At the time it was regarded by people outside the Labour Movement as rank revolution.
In the dull and dingy room in Mile End this little band of Labour men declared for direct employment of labour and municipal workshops. The L.C.C. Works Department, the first of its kind in the country, was the result. They agreed on a minimum wage of sixpence an hour for labourers and ninepence for artisans, with a maximum working week of fifty-four hours. In many L.C.C. departments higher wages were afterwards secured, and in others an eight-hour day was introduced. They demanded a system of retiring pensions for workmen as for officials. This, too, in certain departments soon became practical politics on the County Council.
A few days later Crooks was making his first speech at the County Hall. He took part in the debate on the Fair Wages Clause, the final form of which was settled on the principle he laid down. Up to the birth of the London County Council, which was only three years old when Crooks joined it, municipal bodies knew nothing of Fair Wages Clauses in contracts. The London County Council set an example which has since been followed by public authorities all over the kingdom.
This triumph for Labour was not won without a keen struggle. All kinds of proposals were discussed with a view to defining a fair wage. It looked as though the Labour Bench were in danger of losing the day, when the situation was saved by what John Burns afterwards told Crooks was a happy inspiration.
The County Council was about to adopt what the Labour Bench regarded as an unsatisfactory resolution. Crooks hastily wrote out an amendment which ultimately formed the basis of a settlement. He showed it to Burns, as leader of the Labour Party, and the latter immediately got up and moved it. The words are worth repeating, since they supplied the foundation for a Fair Wages Clause destined to become famous:—
That all contractors be compelled to sign a declaration that they pay the trade union rate of wages and observe the hours of labour and conditions recognised by the London Trade Unions, and that the hours of labour be inserted in and form part of the contract by way of schedule, and that penalties be enforced for any breach of agreement.
Before long this was the only proposal before the Council. The original motion was withdrawn, while amendment after amendment directed against the proposal Crooks had prepared was thrown out. Moderate and Progressive members got up to say that to enforce trade union wages was to fly in the face of political economy. It was this remark that drew from Crooks his maiden speech. How little he was known then may be judged from the fact that the Daily Chronicle's report the next day referred to him as Mr. Brooks. Thus:—
Mr. Brooks said that political economy never took humanity into account, but unless humanity was considered there could be no justice to the worker. No contractor had ever been ruined by paying trade union rates of wages. The best wages had always meant the best workmen. Trade unions were anxious that the surplus labour of the country should be employed, and they only asked the Council to fix a minimum rate of wages. The sooner the Council employed men direct the better. In the name of humanity and Christianity he appealed to the Council to adopt trade union rates of wages.
The day this report appeared Crooks received the following letter from "Marxian," of the Labour Leader, his friend George Samuel:—
My dear Crooks,—Are you the Mr. Brooks of to-day's Chronicle report? If so, permit me to congratulate you on your speech. It struck the one true note in all the weary debate. The awakened consciousness of man has already interfered pretty considerably with the economic "law of population" and must interfere even more drastically with the economic "law of supply and demand." Both laws are for semi-brutes and not for men. To say that supply and demand shall settle wages is brutal. You may not be a very learned man, friend Crooks, but at any rate you are not weighted with that false learning which slays the heart to feed the head.
The fair wages debate went on from week to week at the County Hall, not wearily, as Crooks's correspondent suggests, but with much spirit and party feeling. Finally Lord Rosebery, as chairman, advised the Council to hold a special meeting to settle the question. Before that meeting took place the chairman invited Crooks to discuss the matter with him with a view to arriving at a compromise likely to commend itself to the majority. Crooks refused to withdraw his claim for trade union wages, and after the two had had a long informal talk on the question, Lord Rosebery accepted the Labour member's view.
When the special meeting assembled the late Lord Farrer (then Sir Thomas Farrer) carried an amendment to the trade union motion. By this amendment the word "London" was deleted from the motion, and it was made to read that contractors should "pay the trade union rate of wages and observe the hours of labour and conditions recognised by the trade unions in the place or places where the contract is executed."
It will be seen, then, that the principle of trade union wages as laid down by Crooks remained intact. On this principle the L.C.C. Fair Wages Clause was established. It stipulates that the "rates of pay are to be not less nor the hours of labour more than those recognised by associations of employers and trade unions and in practice obtained." It provides further that "where in any trade there is no trade union, the Council shall fix the rates of wages and the hours of labour."
The Labour Councillor for Poplar was soon on the warpath again. He called the Council's attention to the low wages paid to some of the park attendants. He instanced the man in charge of Red Lion Square, who was receiving no more than thirteen shillings a week.
"The man's not worth more," shouted a member. "He's got a wooden leg."
"Yes, but he hasn't got a wooden stomach," came the retort from the Labour Bench.
And the man with the wooden leg, as well as other park attendants, had their wages brought up to the living standard.
Crooks soon became a good all-round municipal administrator, as well as a Labour representative. He had stated in his first election address:—
As a workman I should seek especially to represent the interests of the working classes who form three-fourths of the ratepayers of Poplar, while giving every attention to the general work of the London County Council and to the general interests of Poplar.
I am heartily in favour of what is known as the London programme—of Home Rule for London, as enjoyed by other municipalities; of the relief of the present ratepayers by taxing the owner as well as the occupier; and of the equalisation of rates throughout London for the relief of the poorer districts.
I am in favour of municipal ownership or control of water, tramways, markets, docks, lighting, parks, and the police.
I would support all measures which would help to raise the standard of life for the poor, especially in the way of better housing and a strict enforcement of the Public Health Acts.
Crooks, in fact, became one of the master-builders of the New London which the L.C.C. created. In face of heavy opposition he was one of that strenuous band of stalwarts who in the 'nineties raised London out of the chaos and darkness that reigned before the County Council was called into being, and gave the capital for the first time a sense of civic unity.
In later years the claims of Parliament turned much of his energy into other useful channels. But to this day he still remains a member of the London County Council, and though now so much engrossed in national politics, he is none the less proud of his record in the service of London. He never looks back to the strenuous 'nineties on the County Council without being thankful.
"I believe we put new life into the municipal politics of the whole country in those days," he tells you. "The London County Council showed the people of England what great powers for good lay in the hands of municipalities. We became a terror to all the monopolists who had fattened on London for generations. We struck at slum-owners, ground landlords, the music-hall offenders, food adulterators, and those who robbed the poor by unjust weights. We swept the tramway and water companies out of London, and by substituting public control gave the people better and cheaper services. We broke down the contractors' ring and started our own Works Department, the worst abused but the most successful and the most daring municipal undertaking of the last quarter of a century.
"They were glorious days. That ten years' struggle between the people and the monopolists was a strife of giants. The victory we gained in London was a victory for progressive municipal government all over the country.
"We on the Labour Bench were in the front of the battle all the time. While the big campaigns were going on we were not neglecting the smaller duties. We carried the County Council right into the working-man's home. We not only protected poor tenants from house-spoilers and extortionate water companies, we gave a helping hand to the housewife. We saw that the coal sacks were of proper size, that the lamp oil was good, the dustbin emptied regularly, that the bakers' bread was of proper weight, that the milk came from wholesome dairies and healthy cows, that the coster in the street and the tradesman in the shop gave good weight in everything they sold."
For several years Crooks was a member and at one time chairman of the Public Control Committee of the London County Council. It was this committee that looked after these numerous small duties bearing so important a relation to the working-man's home. Crooks kept a keen eye on the coal sack. It was found that all over London coal was being delivered in sacks too small to hold the prescribed weight. There was consternation among the offending dealers when the County Council began to pounce down upon them.
In reference to this matter Crooks tells a quaint story. During one of the L.C.C. elections he heard a couple of lads in heated altercation.
"The County Council! Don't you talk to me about them people," one of them cried. "They oughter be all at the bottom of the sea. They nearly ruined my pore ole dad."
"That's bad. How was it?"
"Afore the County Council was heard of a two-hundredweight sack didn't have to be no bigger 'n that"—holding his hand on a level with his chest—"but now they have to be this size"—and his hand went above his head. "Nearly ruined the pore ole man," he added. "He ain't got over it yet."
The Public Control Committee did more than ensure proper weight; it saw to it that dealers did not deliver coal inferior in quality to that described on the ticket. It recovered damages from a merchant who misrepresented the quality of his coals. When the case was reported to the L.C.C. one of the older members, to whom this kind of thing was wholly a new exercise of public duty, declared that he supposed the Council would next be insisting that the workman's Sunday joint consisted of nothing but good meat.
"And why not?" asked Crooks, who followed him in the debate. "If the man pays for fresh meat and receives bad meat, and is too poor to take action himself, it is the duty of the public authority to see that he gets justice."
There is no more ardent believer than Crooks in Ruskin's dictum that when a people apologises for its pitiful criminalities and endures its false weights and its adulterated food, the end is not far off.
One at least of the pitiful criminalities of our modern civilisation—baby-farming—was dealt a blow during his chairmanship of the Public Control Committee from which it is not likely ever to recover. He represented the L.C.C. before the Committee of the House of Commons which considered the Infant Life Protection Bill promoted by the Council. That was before his own Parliamentary career began. Day after day the Labour man strove with barristers and Members of Parliament in the Commons Committee Room to safeguard infants of misfortune from cruelty and neglect. His advocacy prevailed. The Bill was passed. Baby-farming as then existing in London came to an end.
Testimony from Sir John McDougall and Lord Welby—Declining the Vice-chairmanship of the L.C.C.—How Crooks Lost His Overcoat—Work on the Technical Education Board—The Blackwall Tunnel—Chairman of the Bridges Committee.
From the first, Crooks has shared the representation of Poplar on the London County Council with Sir John McDougall. The retired merchant was at the top of the poll in 1892, while the Labour man found himself elected as the second member with a thousand majority over the two Moderate candidates. At every L.C.C. election since Crooks has headed the poll.
Two such men, of course, differ in their public policy widely. This notwithstanding, Sir John paid his Labour colleague a striking tribute during the parliamentary by-election in Woolwich. Sir John was Chairman of the London County Council at the time. This is what he wrote to the Woolwich electors a few days before the poll:—
Mr. Crooks has been my colleague on the London County Council for the last twelve years, and during the whole of that time he has worked with great zeal and ability for the good of London.... His zeal is great, and his wisdom is as great as his zeal. I doubt whether anyone in London has done so much as he in all the measures which tend to the uplifting and the good of the people.
Lord Welby, another of his colleagues on the County Council, seized the same opportunity to tell the electors what he thought of their Labour candidate. The two opinions, coming from men who had often opposed his policy, and whose walks of life lay so widely apart from his own, form no small tribute to the worth of his municipal work. Said Lord Welby:—
Mr. Crooks's knowledge, his experience, his courage, his readiness of humour, his good temper, and, above all, his devotion to the work he has undertaken have made him one of the most useful, as well as one of the most popular, members of the London County Council.
His devotion was shown by his attendance. For thirteen years in succession he never missed a single Council meeting. Until Parliament began to claim his time his record of attendance every year, both at Council and Committee meetings, stood among the half-dozen highest.
After such a long unbroken service, it was bitter to be kept at home by an illness one Tuesday, the day the L.C.C. meets. Only one other councillor—Sir William Collins—had kept pace with him during those thirteen years. Crooks wrote to his friendly rival from a sick bed:—
"To-day you go ahead in this long and pleasant competition between us. I cannot help thinking that after all it is a case of the survival of the fittest, for I cannot leave my room."
"I hate to win under such conditions," said Sir William in his cheering reply.
At one time the Progressive party proposed to nominate him as vice-chairman, a position entitling the holder to the L.C.C. chairmanship in the year following. The honour was declined. He believed he could be more useful as an independent member.
So the sequel proved. As a member of the Parks Committee he never wearied in working for more open spaces and children's play-places in the poorer parts of London. It had long been a grievance to the working classes of London that nearly all the parks lay in the West End and the suburbs. Since the poor districts were now too thickly covered with houses ever to permit of spacious parks being provided in their midst, Crooks was one of the most earnest in pleading that the Council should make amends by rescuing every vacant plot of land that remained and converting it into a recreation ground, no matter how small.
His strenuous plea secured for the East-End alone three splendid open spaces. These are the Bromley Recreation Ground, the Tunnel Gardens at Poplar, and the Island Gardens that take their name from the Isle of Dogs. To visit any one of these, and see therein children playing and tired people finding rest, is to feel deeply what a benign influence has fallen over these poor neighbourhoods.
Crooks obtained this recreation ground for Bromley at the cost of his overcoat. The open space was formed out of something like a morass by the banks of the Lea. It lay hidden away in that labyrinth of sterile streets stretching southwards from Bow Bridge to the spot where the lesser river loses itself in the Thames.
He had persuaded a party of his County Council colleagues to go with him to the neighbourhood. They all left their overcoats in the private omnibus that took them down from the County Hall, while he showed them over the unwholesome little waste, as it then was, and pointed out its possibilities as a recreation ground. When they returned they learnt that one of the overcoats had been stolen.
"I see it's not mine," said Lord Monkswell, pointing to his astrachan.
"Nor mine," added the Hon. Lionel Holland, then M.P. for the division, as he picked up one lined with fur.
"No," said Crooks; "people about here daren't wear overcoats like those. If there's one missing, it's bound to be mine worse luck."
He laughed at the loss then and many times afterwards, though he had a private reason for lamenting it; it was a recent gift from half a dozen working-men admirers. He laughed because he found he was able to make use of the incident in his long agitation on the L.C.C. to get the waste reclaimed.
Whenever his colleagues inquired where was this mysterious outlandish place he was so anxious to convert into a recreation ground, he would make reply:—
"It's the place where they preferred my coat to Lord Monkswell's."
It came to be so well known on the County Council as the place where Crooks lost his overcoat, that when finally he got a definite proposal to buy the ground brought forward there was nothing but a good-natured acquiescence from every member.
On the formation of the L.C.C. Technical Education Board, he pleaded the cause of good craftsmanship with some effect. He carried a resolution conferring special facilities for technical instruction upon working-class districts.
Long after he retired from the Board he received from a working-man's son a little proof of the practical results of his efforts. It came in the following letter:—
You will probably remember how some years ago you pleaded my case on the L.C.C., and how, through your influence, I was enabled to complete my studies in naval architecture at Greenwich College.
I am sure you will be glad to know that I have now passed my final examination and have just been admitted a member of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors. My official appointment is that of Assistant Constructor in one of the principal Government Dockyards, where I have been on probation for the last twelve months or more. The final examinations were held last July in London and occupied more than three weeks, with an exam, almost daily.
I feel that I owe you a debt of gratitude for pleading my cause at the time. My father had spent his all on me while I was at the college, and he being a toolsmith with seven children, you can well understand that what he had by him he could ill afford on me.
My father and the others of the family desire to join with me in this letter of thanks and gratitude to you.
Mention has already been made of how Crooks and the Poplar Labour League originated at the Dock Gate meetings the scheme for a technical institute for his native borough. So many times was this project delayed that he often told his Poplar audiences he feared he would go down to posterity as the man who talked of an institute that never came. It was not until the early part of 1906 that the institute was opened. There is a reference to it in the annual report of the Poplar Labour League for that year:—
Some years ago the League mooted the idea of a technical institute for Poplar. Mr. Crooks took it up and carried it to official quarters, never letting the subject drop, until it stands at last an accomplished fact. A School of Marine Engineering and Nautical Academy has recently been opened in Poplar.
A handsome building has been erected in High Street, and in it will be taught seamanship and navigation, marine engineering and naval architecture and propulsion, general mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, pattern making, carpentry and woodwork, and theoretical and practical chemistry, physics, and mechanics. Nothing more appropriate could have been built in Poplar. It is mainly due to the tireless efforts of Mr. Crooks that it exists, and it will stand as a monument to him.
But Poplar boasts a greater monument to its Labour Councillor. He was on the L.C.C. Bridges Committee during the making of Blackwall Tunnel. In its day the largest subaqueous tunnel in the world, its construction involved years of anxious labour.
The tunnel carries vehicular and passenger traffic under the Thames between Poplar and Greenwich, five miles below the nearest bridge, that at the Tower. Before it was made the two million Londoners living east of the bridges were without any public means of crossing the river. To build an ordinary bridge was impossible with so many ships passing night and day to and from the London Pool. It was decided to take the traffic under the Thames by descending roadways leading to a tunnel some seventy feet below high-water mark.
From the time he joined the Council to that day in May, 1897, when the King as Prince of Wales went down to Poplar to open the tunnel, on behalf of Queen Victoria, Crooks was among the keenest of the public men engaged in carrying that great engineering feat through. He made himself so thoroughly master of the details that he was in great demand all over London as a lecturer on the tunnel. The chief engineers on the works who heard the lecture congratulated him on the way he made intelligible and interesting the complicated system by which the tunnel was bored through the clay within a foot or two of the river bed.
So satisfied were his fellow County Councillors with the practical work he did at Blackwall that on its completion they elected him Chairman of the Bridges Committee. In that capacity he steered through the Council and through a Committee of the House of Commons two other schemes for tunnels under the Thames, one for foot passengers only between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, and the other for general traffic between Shadwell and Rotherhithe, designed on a larger scale than the tunnel at Blackwall. Interest in these schemes, however, can never be so great as it was in the Blackwall experiment, the first of its kind attempted.
In the special Blackwall Tunnel number issued by the Municipal Journal, Crooks figures among those described as "the men who made the tunnel." Following sketches and portraits of Sir Alexander Binnie (then the L.C.C. engineer, who designed the tunnel), of Sir Weetman Pearson, M.P. (the contractor who executed the work), of Sir William Bull, M.P. (who was then chairman of the Bridges Committee), is a reference to other members of the Committee who took a prominent part in the work. The first place after the chairman is given to Crooks. The Municipal Journal says:—
Mr. Will Crooks, more than any other man, has made Londoners acquainted with the tunnel. His popular lecture on Blackwall Tunnel has been given in all parts of London to all kinds of audiences, and everywhere the clear, picturesque description Mr. Crooks has given, aided by the lantern and his own genial wit, has made intelligible to Londoners, old, young, rich, and poor, what is, after all, a somewhat dry and difficult subject.
This only goes to show how closely Mr. Crooks himself has been identified with the construction of the tunnel. As one of the representatives of the Poplar district, he has turned his membership of the Bridges Committee to good account by giving to the tunnel his special attention. No Councillor has been so frequent a visitor to the various works, and it is doubtful whether any outsider went so many times into the compressed air.
The workmen had just cause to bless the Poplar County Councillor. It was owing to Mr. Crooks's efforts that a revised schedule of wages was adopted. The result of this was that the contractors paid an additional £26,000 in wages. With all his zeal for the workmen, Mr. Crooks never once came in conflict with either the contractors or the engineers. Men and masters at Blackwall have all held the worthy Labour Councillor in the highest regard, and both are sorry that their long and cheerful connection must now be severed.
The same number of the Municipal Journal contained an article by Crooks himself, entitled, "A Labour View of the Blackwall Tunnel." The article displayed with what tact and modesty the Labour member had safeguarded the interests of his own class without neglecting the interests of the people of London. It bore out the statement made in his first speech to the Council, that no contractor ever lost by paying the trade union rate of wages.
Elected to the Poplar Board of Guardians—Bumbledom in Power—Prison preferred to Workhouse—Poverty treated like Crime.
Six months after his return to the London County Council, Poplar elected Crooks to the Board of Guardians. When he took his seat as a member in the very Board-room where thirty years before he clung timorously to his mother's skirt he knew that the task of his life had begun.
He and his friend George Lansbury were elected together—the only Labour men on a Board of twenty-four. They were the firstfruits of the reduced qualification for Guardians introduced by Mr. (afterwards Lord) Ritchie, at that time President of the Local Government Board.
To Crooks belongs much of the credit for this welcome change. He felt keenly that working-men and women could never become Guardians of the Poor so long as the £40 property qualification remained. He persuaded the Poplar Trustees, of whom he was one, to ask the Local Government Board to make it possible for workpeople to become Guardians. Mr. Ritchie, ever sympathetic towards the East-End, a division of which he was then representing in Parliament, met this request from Poplar by lowering the qualification to £10. His successor at the Local Government Board, Sir Henry Fowler, abolished the property qualification altogether.
At the time of Crooks's election the dissatisfaction felt by ratepayers with the old Guardians was deep and bitter. The Local Government Board has evidence in its possession that poor people of the district were saying at the time that if you wanted out-relief you must move into such and such a street, where rents were collected by someone who had influence with the Board.
Inside the workhouse Crooks found a state of things that seems incredible to-day. Bumbledom held sway over paupers and Guardians alike.
There were Guardians who had never been inside the workhouse once. When Crooks attempted to enter as a Guardian he found that the Master had power to shut the gate upon him. Without the Master's permission, except on the regular House Committee days, Guardians had no legal right inside the workhouse at all.
The two Labour men raised such a hubbub over this anomaly that Sir Henry Fowler issued an order giving a Guardian the right to enter the workhouse at any reasonable hour. As a result there began, not only in Poplar but all over the country, a marked improvement in the treatment of old people in workhouses.
Here was a distinct score at the first venture. With the right of admission established, Crooks made full use of it. He found most of the officers hostile. So much so, that during a fire that broke out in the workhouse bakery, bringing the brigade engines round, one of the officers exclaimed, in the presence of the others when the fire was at its height:—
"The only thing wanting now is that Crooks and Lansbury should be put on the top of it."
The cheers with which this remark was received were soon to give way to grave concern. It was clear the two Labour men meant to put an end to many things. Several of the officers were summarily suspended by Crooks one morning when he appeared on the scene unexpectedly.
A woman inmate had contrived to escape from the workhouse. She came round to his house and knocked him up. In consequence of an alarming story she told him respecting the conditions under which a fellow inmate had died in her arms that very night, Crooks hurried round to the institution and suspended certain of the officers on the spot.
The officers whom Crooks had suspended were dismissed by the Board. Nor were they by any means the last to be dismissed or to take their departure, for other scandals were brought to light.
"We found the condition of things in the House almost revolting," Crooks stated in evidence before the Local Government Board Inquiry of 1906. "The place was dirty. The stores were empty. The inmates had not sufficient clothes, and many were without boots to their feet. The food was so bad that the wash-tubs overflowed with what the poor people could not eat. It was almost heart-breaking to go round the place and hear the complaints and see the tears of the aged men and women.
"'Poverty's no crime, but here it's treated like crime,' they used to say.
"Many of them defied the regulations on purpose to be charged before a magistrate, declaring that prison was better than the workhouse.
"One day I went into the dining-room and found women sitting on the long forms, some sullen, some crying. In front of each was a basin of what was alleged to be broth. They called it greasy water, and that was exactly what it looked and tasted like. They said they had to go out and wash blankets on that. I appealed to the master to give them something to eat, as they said they would sooner go to prison than commence work on that. Those women, like the men, were continually contriving to get sent to prison in order to escape the workhouse. After a few heated words between the master and me he gave them some food, and none of them went to prison that day.
"A few weeks later I was in the workhouse when these same women were creating a fearful uproar.
"'Ah, there you are,' said the master, meeting me. 'Go and look at your angels now! A nice lot they are to stick up for!'
"I went to the dining-room. There was a dead silence the moment I entered.
"'I am right down ashamed of you,' I said. 'When you were treated like animals, no wonder you behaved like animals. Now that Mr. Lansbury and I have got you treated like human beings, we expect you to behave like human beings.'
"They said not a word, and later in the day the ringleaders, without any prompting, came to me and expressed their regret. From that day to this no such scene among the workhouse women has ever been repeated.
"The staple diet when I joined the Board was skilly. I have seen the old people, when this stuff was put before them, picking out black specks from the oatmeal. These were caused by rats, which had the undisturbed run of the oatmeal bin. No attempt was made to cleanse the oatmeal before it was prepared for the old people.
"Whenever one went into the men's dining-room there were quarrels about the food. I have had to protect old and weak men against stronger men, who would steal what was eatable of their dinners. There was no discipline. The able-bodied men's dining-room on Sundays gave one as near an approach to hell as anything on this earth. It was everybody for himself and the devil take the hindmost. If a fellow could fight he got as much as he wanted. If he could not, he got nothing. Fights, followed by prosecutions at the police courts, were common. The men boasted that prison had no worse terrors than that place. They were absolutely beyond control. They wandered about all over the place, creating all kinds of discord, and even threatening to murder the officers. Two labour masters nearly lost their lives in trying to control them.
"The inmates were badly clothed as well as badly fed. Not one of them had a change of clothing. Their under-clothes were worn to rags. If they washed them they had to borrow from each other in the interval.
"The inmates' clothes were not only scanty, they were filthy. On one occasion the whole of the workhouse linen was returned by the laundry people because it was so over-run with vermin that they would not wash it.
"One of the inmates—a woman—who was doing hard work at scrubbing every day, asked me whether she couldn't have a pair of boots.
"'Surely,' I said, putting her off for the time, 'nobody here goes without boots?'
"A second and a third time when I came across her scrubbing the floors she pleaded for boots. She raised her skirt from the wet stone floor, and showed two sloppy pieces of canvas on her feet, and that was all she had in the way of boots."
Crooks went on to relate that he walked along the corridor and saw a female officer. "There's a woman over there who has asked me three times to get her a pair of boots," he said.
She drew her skirt round her and said, "Oh, why do you worry about these people; they are not our class."
"Worry about them!" Crooks rejoined. "What do you mean by our class? We are here to see these people properly clothed. I do not want to quarrel, but that woman must have a pair of boots to-day."