LABOUR UNREST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 226, 23 September 1936, Page 17

LABOUR UNREST.

The letter of "Citizen" and of "A Returned Soldier's Wife" are provocative of thought. The speech of the Hon. P. Fraser, taken in conjunction with the utterances of the Hon. R. Semple at Huntly, should be sufficient provocation for action. The manner in which these politicians handle the situations arising out of their impotence or absolute inability to fulfil their party's election promises would be ludicrous were it not for the stark tragedy underlying it all. For a mother to threaten to run away from a wayward child is not only undignified but utterly foolish, to boot. But for two Cabinet Ministers, members of that Government which, rightly or wrongly, has at present control of the welfare of this Dominion, to threaten to abdicate if the people who electcd them to office to serve them as paid servants do not do exactly as they, the servants, want them to do, they will no longer serve. Shades of Gilbert! No, Gilbert in his wildest dreams could hardly have contemplated such a farce. "Trades unionism and democracy are at stake." Yes, they have been at the stake for years. Fettered and gyved by archaic policies enunciated by morons and perpetuated by human errors who profess to believe that the State is greater than those who make the State. But it needed a Labour Government to pile the faggots around the stake and apply the torch. It needed a Labour Government to scream "Liberty!" and despotically deprive its subjects of the liberty to withhold their labour, or why the clause in the P.W.D. agreement, why the outburst of temper and the threats at Motueka? "Put a Labour Government in power.' "Give us a chance to show what we can do!" was the cry for years. Well, they are in power now. and what have they done? Ten months in power and their own figures prove that the number of registered unemployed (males), breadwinners, actual or potential, has increased by 2414, the number of men on sustenance bv 11,858, while the number of men on full-time work, subsidised by the Government, has decreased by 8402, and we still have 2804 men registered as unemployed, but who receiveno relief. Then the deputy-leader of this Government states publicly that "if the London market is missed, the Government cannot go on with its humanitarian legislation." If that fearful record of unemployment increases and tlie upward surse of commodity is a sample of its humanitarian legislation, then miss the London markets, get back to first principles and try to learn that a nation, like people, live on what they consume not on what they export or sell. F. McLEOD.