LABOUR SEAT RETAINED.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 148, 23 June 1923, Page 7

LABOUR SEAT RETAINED.

MR. R. SMILLIE RETURNED. BIG MAJORITY OVER. lIBERAI. LONDON, June 22. The by-election for Morpeth, necessitated by the death of Mr. John Cairns (Labour M.1.), resulted in the return of the Labour candidate, Mr. R. Smillie, formerly president of t!ie Miners' Federation. The voting was: — R. Smillic (Labour) 20,053 F. C. Thornborough (Liberal) .. 13,057 Majority (i,!)G6 — (A. and N.Z. Cable.) The voting at the general election in November, 1922, was: J. Cairns 15,020, F. C. Thornborough (Liberal) 10,007, C. S. Short (Conservative) G045. Robert Smillie first came into the orbit of the Britisli public by his handling of the miners' ca.se before the Sankey Coal ('ommiseion. He has been known for half a lifetime as the longest headed leader in the industrial arena. He is one of Die pioneers of, and has throughout been President of the Triple Industrial Alliance, which has a total membership of 1,315,000, and was capable, as one of its spokesmen has said, of "'stopping every wheel in the country if the necessity arose of doing it." But Smillio is never likely to take precilpitnto action. Though he was an uncompromising pacifist in the early days of the wai, he afterwards came round to the view that "the enemies abroad had to be beaten before those at home could l>e tackled." Twitted on a famous occasion for his pacifist procilivities he replied, "If my boy asks mc -what I did in the great war. I will cay, 'My eon, I tried to stop the tiling. , '" One of his sons was an X.C.O. in the British Army, the other was a CO.