HYSTERIA OF ILL-BALANCED

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 232, 1 October 1925, Page 3

HYSTERIA OF ILL-BALANCED

» ■ TRADE UNIONISTS PRACTICAL. RED ARMY SCARE. (From Our Own Correspondent-) LONDON, August 20. How much is there in all this antiBolshevist, anti-Communist scare which the stunt Press and the "Morning Post" —which has revolution and antiSemitism on the brain —are so busy about? Most people are asking themselves this question, and the view oil Mr. Ben Tillett, who is known in tha : Dominion, asks for consideration at this ' point. He has been interviewed on the • question, and his dictum is that hysteria is the right classification of the Commu. nist propaganda, which is inciting men in the services and in the post office and railways to revolution. It appeals, he says, to a quality of brain which at once becomes combative t over issues which really have no being in fact or substance. The whole of the * trade union movement has become by experience and circumstances the most practical body, with a solidarity only made possible by discipline and experience No single mischievous word has ever been uttered by this body to soldiers, navy men, police or Civil servants, ; and will never be issued unless grave - provocation compels an interferenco with the present order of society. . Whatever may ultimately evolve as ■ lighting factors in resisting or attacking . the capitalist system, up to now no . other than argument on an economic basis has in any way expressed the viewpoint of trade unionism and trade union organisation. Any designs for Bed armies can only be futilities, and expressed in an organised form^ only after the gravest consideration. The Trade Unions Congress, which is about to meet at Scarborough, represents the disciplined, the ordered, and the organised form of mentality in political and industrial outlook. The latest effort is the shrieking of a j panic-mongcring crowd who are anxiously endeavouring to create a scare. With forty years' experience of the Labour movement, I may safely assure the public that, unless new and reckless inspirations arouse extreme views— which can only he roused by reactionary and einistcr influences of capitalism an d I Press distortions—nothing but conven- | tional, practical and purely British ' methods will be utilised in the continuity of policy and relentless purpose which the trade union movement has stood for for more than a hundred years to secure for the workers the fnllest benefits and rewards of industrial toil.