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Ramsay Macdonald on the first day of the convention.

The Ulster "Loyalists" are in armed rebellion against the State and the King's authority with the open encouragement of the Tory Party. Another private army, created by yet another Tory peer is given a free hand to beat and murder Trade Unionists in England. And how does the King react? He casts in his lot with the reactionary peers and those same rebellious Ulsterites. He joins his influence with the forces which are working against and seeking to destroy the House of Commons and our Constitutional forms of Parliamentary Government.

Needless to say, he and his servile upholders, Liberal and Unionist, in the Press and in Parliament, will seek to conceal this naked truth from the public gaze. But the point is not open to dispute. The Liberal party did not ask for his interference, whatever the Cabinet may have done. The Irish party had no need for his services, and Mr. Redmond and Mr. Dillon only consented to attend the conference because the King "commanded" their presence. The Labour party resents his interference. These three sections of the Parliament stood loyally together on Home Rule for Ireland though; the Tories and the Unionists objected, and, therefore, the King, in interfering, can have no other object than to assist his friends the Tories and the Unionists. The hypocritical assurance which is being spread abroad that the House of Commons will have the last word is a mere blind. If an agreement be reached it will come to us with the combined weight and authority of the King, the Tory party, the House of Lords, and the Liberal Party behind it. Under such circumstances the House of Commons will be paralysed. I have never for a moment doubted that part of any settlement come to will be an immediate dissolution, regardless of the views of the Coalition. We now begin to see why the Royal crowd have been visiting Merthyr and so many other industrial centres during the past two or three years. They desired to popularise themselves with the mob so that they might rivet the chains of their iron rule more firmly upon them.

King George is not a statesman. He is not the pleasure loving scapegrace which his father was before him, but, like his father, he is destitute of even ordinary ability. Born in the ranks of the working class his most likely fate would have been that of a street-corner loafer. And this is the man who is being made a tool of by the reactionary classes to break the power of Democracy and weaken and finally destroy the power of Parliament. But Democracy will accept the challenge. The rights our fathers won by sacrifice shall be maintained.