THE QUESTION (weekly poem)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE QUESTION

What is a Labour man? He who has sold

His class and their Cause in the shambles of Gold,

For pelf, and a place in the council of Greed,

Weaving snares for those dupes Want and Ignorance breed,

Where the offspring of Toil, from the cot to the grave,

Are consigned to the mart of the modern wage-slave.

Here "organised Labour" support and applaud

The Thugs of all progress, Cant, Falsehood and Fraud;

And, like autumn leaves borne on the blast of the storm,

They are whirled in the vortex of futile reform.

Against the class currents they struggle in vain,

Till they sink, where no trace of their efforts remain.

When Knowledge imparts to the people her power.

Slavish fear shall depart from their hearts in that hour;

And thrusting aside tyrant forms of the past,

Revolution shall crown them with glory at last.

The Labour pest, hurled from its seat of ill-fame,

Shall be hailed a political relic of shame.

Then time in its fullness will give Freedom birth,

When the Socialist era shall gladden the earth.

F. G. Thompson.