Conference to ban the small Labour for Life group. Like its political counterparts, Labour has moved a long way from its early Christian influences and origins.
Keir Hardie and John Wheatley
The first Labour MP, Keir Hardie, wrote a tract which might need to be revised in these inflationary times, entitled, 'Can a Man Be A Christian On a Pound a Week?' Hardie was raised an atheist but was converted to Christianity in 1897 and later became a lay preacher of the Evangelical Union Church. He was a member of the Good Templars and a temperance lecturer. Although he had met Friedrich Engels, Eleanor Marx and other prominent Marxist Socialists, was well acquainted with Marxist and revisionist socialist literature, and had worked closely with the Fabian intellectuals, Hardie's socialism was neither scientific nor utopian, neither political nor economic. He said that his socialism was the result of 'his own thought and feeling, the plight of the workers, and the state of the world'. In 1910 he wrote: 'I have said, both in writing and from the platform many times, that the impetus which drove me first of all into the Labour movement, and the inspiration which has carried me on it has been derived more from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth than all other sources combined.'30 Hardie tended to see all social and economic questions from a Christian and moral standpoint. He was often a lone and ineffective figure in the House of Commons during pre-First World War days, perceiving his role as prophetic, a voice for the coming capture of power by mass democracy. He used the Commons to speak to the voiceless people outside the House of Commons who lived in the slums and the back streets, rather than to play parliamentary games or give polished 'good' parliamentary performances. He scandalised Members when he took his seat in 1892 by wearing his cloth cap and tweed suit. With puritanical contempt he spoke in Parliament on one occasion of the lavish menus provided in the House of Commons' restaurants and savaged those Members anxious to suspend the day's sitting because it was Derby day. Hardie's words were backed up by an intimate knowledge of the deprivations of working people. This was born of the hardship of his own youth. His courage in expressing his convictions won him the respect of the poor and deprived. Although Hardie was one of the key influences in establishing the Independent Labour Party, he retained an affinity with Gladstone and the Liberal Party. It was Hardie who persuaded the Labour Representation Committee of the advantage of negotiating the secret 1906 pact with the Liberals. The two parties agreed not to fight one another in thirty seats, thus preventing the Conservatives from winning these seats. The result was the overwhelming 1906 Liberal landslide - but also the