8 - Labour: An Aristocratic Minority

Summary

ON 11 FEBRUARY 1893, Graham’s first letter to a newspaper since June of the previous year appeared, and he was again addressing meetings, and promoting the ILP. Notably, in September of that year, he made an impassioned speech at Featherstone in West Yorkshire, condemning police action in which two miners had been shot dead, in what became known as the Featherstone Massacre, attacking both ‘hypocritical Liberals’ and ‘Tory tyrant.’ He also continued to write sporadically for socialist publications such as the Social Democrat until 1897, and Justice until 1902. However, he no longer made references to land ownership, or to those who made their living from the land, or to Ireland.

Opportunities for political office still presented themselves, but he showed no interest. In 1894 the socialist and Irish nationalist, James Connolly, offered to support him as a Labour candidate in Edinburgh, to which Graham replied, ‘Many thanks for asking me to stand. However, I have no money, I am sorry to say, and this is the third or fourth offer I have been obliged to decline.’ Even with his financial position secure, in 1905 he turned down an invitation to stand as a socialist candidate for the Leith Burghs, and again in South Aberdeen in 1910, with the words that he would ‘not re-enter [the] gas-works for £5000 a year’.

His financial tribulations continued, and in October 1895, it was reported that another farm around Gartmore had been sold, and that Graham had been disposing of the estate in portions. It was also around this time that he began a consistent literary career as an unpaid memoirist and social commentator, and by 1896, as the author of virulent attacks on British imperialism and racism. It is impossible to tell, what, if any, the effect these personal pressures and distractions had had on his renewed political activism, but there is a growing awareness of his disillusionment with the party that he was so instrumental in founding. Watts and Davies conjectured:

There is a case for saying that Graham was disillusioned by success. He was, legend claims, a lover of lost causes; one might therefore argue that he became bored with a cause that appeared to be winning after all. But one might also argue that the success of the ILP was not enough, and that the progress of the Left had been too slow for him to tolerate.