COMPULSORY SERVICE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8463, 31 May 1916, Page 5

COMPULSORY SERVICE

A SOCIALIST MANIFESTO. TU-ADE UNIONISTS WOO ARE COWARDS AND HUMBUGS. j In connection with tho resolution passed by a meeting of trades unionists at Wellington on Saturday, the following extract from the Aberdeen " Journal" of January 18 is of great interest: ; A manifesto on the question of compulsory service and labour has been issued by the Socialist National Defence Committee. After declaring that "they lie who assert that the obligation to defend national liberty and national right is contrary to Socilist principles," the manifesto goes on to say: —

"We. as Socialists, declare that to object to the principle of compulsion when one's native land is attacked ie hypocrisy. Socialism is not a. system of 'go as yoxi please.' Socialism is not anarchism. Socialism is rather the necessary retort and challenge to the individualist school of Radicalism, and we. who have (might for many years on vindication of labour's rights have now to remind organised labour that direct and indirect compulsion is the keystone af'/Ehe edifice of trade unionism.

tf A man who is ii blackleg in vindication of his assertion of the right to work as many hoins nt whatever wages he plo.ises or ran get has short shrift at the hands of organised labour, and lightly so, and tin- physically capable trade unionist who is not required for rital national intoio&ta and who refuses to bear ariy> when the country in Mneatened bj the same horrors that have devastated Belgium and Prance is a humbug and «i coward. From the cradle to the grave, the whole of our social Me is chaiacteii&ed by compulsion. How, then, when millions of ruthless soldiery, led by the most, brutal of all tyrannies, threaten our hearths and homes and the destiny of our people i shall a. man refuse in the misused name of liberty the du^y of discharging with his fellows the elementary right of self-defence. "British workers, we are convinced that the agitation, so far as it carried on in the name of the masses of (British working men, is a slander oft the courage and character of the British masses. ,Wo challenge the sp-caKed, Labour champions of a preniatur* 1 peace, who bloat about democratic control, to resign their seats and appe«l' on this question to;the electorate. We; shall not hesitate to respond to thie ■fiction and to repeat, at Leicester, .at Blackburn, at Bradford, and at bhct- <■ fiold the signal castigation inflicted on them at Merthyr-Tydvil."