THE PEACE CRUSADE IN OLDHAM - NEWSPAPER LETTERS

OLDHAM CHRONICLE
9th August 1917 (Thursday)
THE PEACE MEETING

Sir, I see the fame of the Oldham peace meeting has spread a long way, for I see in your last night's edition a short letter from the Kaiser Wilhelm. He is the only one amongst the lot of writers who signed his name; the others were short of pluck to do so. Let us see who got up the meeting and what it was for. Those who arranged the meeting were a self-elected party whose aim is to teach the government what to do and how to do it. Oldham, like all other towns, wanted neither them nor their opinions, but I suppose they were brimming over with sense and knowledge. It was a case of the three tailors of Tooley Street, and they might have been expected to send a resolution to London that the people of Oldham were ready for a peace at any price or no price at all. but, like all other towns, it did not come off. If these I.L.P. socialists had taken the advice the Chief Constable had given them they would have been all right, but fools will rush in where angels fear to tread. Despite what all the Snowdens and Ramsay MacDonalds say we must go on fighting to a finish, or better we had never fired a shot or lost a man or spent a shilling.
Yours,
ALFRED WALTON
79, Glodwick Road, Oldham

My note ref. Wikipedia :
The three tailors of Tooley Street were, according to Prime Minister George Canning (1770 - 1827), a group of individuals who met up on Tooley street and drafted a list of complaints which was presented as a petition of grievances to parliament and claiming to represent, "We, the people of England ... "

In his 1906 pamphlet 'Faults of the Fabian', HG Wells called the Fabian Society policy on the Boer War 'the Three Tailors of Tooley Street' pronouncements, suggesting the Fabians claimed to speak for all socialists when in fact they spoke only for themselves.