LABOUR AND THE EMPIRE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 69, 21 March 1916, Page 4

LABOUR AND THE EMPIRE.

One cannot say with any degree of I certainty that the new Labour party being formed at Home by Mr. Stanton, M.P., to embrace national service, Imperialism and broad socialism, will be an immediate success, but the movement is highly significant. Mr. Stanton's recent victory at Mcrthyr, the late Mr. Keir Hardic's seat, was a triumph for the principle of compulsion, and the first emphatic indication that a large part of the working classes were prepared to accept it. The new Labour party will be the third in the country. What is known as the Labour party is dominated by the trade unions, which supply the bulk of its membership. Its representatives in Parliament, at the outset of the war,; decided; to support the Government policy unreservedly, a decision' that led to the resignation of the chairman, Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald. Since then the party as a whole, both in and out of Parliament, has worked hard for the national cause. The Independent Labour party, however, which is the largest socialist society affiliated to the Labour party, has exercised a baneful influence throughout the war. The National Executive issued a manifesto dissociating itself from the Government and the Labour party in regard to the war, and declining to assist in the nonparty recruiting campaign. It is true that this manifesto was repudiated by some of the branches, but the antinational policy of the executive was maintained. Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald protests that he is strongly anti-German, but we do not think the " Times " exaggerates when it says that whatever the. intentions of the party may be, "the policy and conduct of its most active ' members have consistently served one ' object, which is the interests of the , enemy." It was these people, who found . excuses for.Germany, befouled their own country,., and . interfered with; preparations for victory, to, whom M. Gustavo " Herve recently referred when he said: i " On the day of victory we shall be , able tc render this justice to certain English Socialists and Labour men—that if we have not been beaten, it is not 1 their fault." One of the aims of Mr. .- Stanton's new organisation will be to , counteract the poison distributed by this party. But the new movement has apparently much wider objects in view. It will " attempt to interest the working classes c in the Empire, and teach them that s national service and Imperialism are not incompatible with democratic ideals. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of British ' politics of recent years has been the in--3 difference of Labour and Radicalism towards problems of defence and of the s Empire. One reason for this was that Labour was very much occupied with its 1 own pressing problems. It was obi viously impossible for a man in London, on the starvation line of wages,, with a \ wife and family suffering from want, to " become enthusiastic about the Empire. . Then it was most unfortunate that > national service and Imperialism were t associated with the Conservative party, . which the working classes regarded as' their natural enemies. The working man 3 would have it that these movements' were ,• entirely due to selfish motives, and one result was that it was impossible to make him see, what he sees now only 2 too clearly, that Germany was prepar- - ing to overthrow his country and its

Empire. Future generations will be amazed thai warnings from such oppor p site sources as Lord Roberts and Robert i Blatchford did not have more effect, The t< leaders of Labour must bear a share.of jt responsibility for the failure of the n working man to see that the country b was not ready to meet the greatest danger that had ever threatened it, and for his belief that the oversea Empire J was no concern of his, but.was merely a t pawn in the Tory game of politics. We c say a share advisedly, because the t responsibility rests on the whole nation '« from the Government downwards. The 1 war, however, has made an immense < difference. The working man sees that he lived in a fool's paradise. He sees ] soldiers coming over all the seas to fight , the Empire's battles, and it strikes him ) that the Empire is a very much more i wonderful and valuable thing than he . ever realised. He reads in the papers '. i fiery anti-German and Imperialist ; speeches by the head of a Labour Gov- J eminent in one of the Dominions, and i ,he is perhaps impressed by the fact that ; this Prime Minister's party, before the , war, introduced a system of compulsory military training, which he had always . been told was militarism, and only pro-po3ed-by the rich to put shackles on the poor-' The war is full of lessons for every partyg-at Home and throughout the Empire! The working class, as every.body should bear in mind, is only a portion of a world-wide Empire that was caught unprepared, but not unwarned. But without the co-operation of the working classes it will be impossible for the Empire to fulfil its destiny.