Hellraisers Journal: Letter to Editor Condemns Ben Tillett for Claiming That “Vicious Class Antagonism” Resulted in Deaths of Third Class Passengers of Titanic
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 23, 1912
Cambridge, England – Letter to Editor Condemns Ben Tillett
From the Cambridge Daily News of April 20, 1912:
MR. BEN TILLETT AND THE TITANIC,
TO THE EDITOR.
Received by Board of Trade April 19, 1912
Sir,-According to the “Labour Gazette,” Mr. Ben Tillett is reported to be circulating a resolution passed by the Executive of the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers’ Union, protesting “against the wanton and callous disregard of human life and the vicious class antagonism shown in the practical forbidding of the saving of the lives of the third-class passengers on the ill-fated Titanic.”
Does Mr. Tillett know that as far as is known at present an equal number of each class has been rescued, and that several millionaires have perished, giving their lives heroically for the sake of the women and children? Mr. Tillett ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself, and the sooner he publicly apologises for his insults to those brave men the better will be his position in the eyes of the workers. He is called a champion of the workers, but if this is a sample of the sympathy he extends then my opinion is that he ought to change places with one of those bravo first-class passengers who so heroically sacrificed their lives irrespective of class. The sooner the workmen select different men for their leaders the sooner will their needs be granted. Such men as these are not worthy to be called Englishmen.- Yours, etc.,
C. C. P. BARRETT.
79, Hills-road.
[Resolution to Board of Trade and emphasis added.]
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