The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and The Echo. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1927. LABOUR IN COUNCIL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 212, 8 September 1927, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and The Echo.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1927. LABOUR IN COUNCIL.

For the eaute that lack* attittanet. For the wrong that need* re*utame% For the future in the distance, And the good that urn can do.

The Trades Union Congress, still in session at Edinburgh, has made itself memorable by its emphatic rejection of a proposal to recognise the unions connected with the so-called Minority movement, which is merely the Communist movement under a thin disguise. So well established is the connection between the Minority movement and Bolshevism that a few days ago the Soviet envoy at Paris actually signed a Minority manifesto, and Mr. Herbert Smith is perfectly accurate in his description of the Minority unions as controlled and directed from Moscow. There seems to have been some controversy in the Congress over the adoption of a committee's report repudiating Communism. But in the end the report was endorsed by 3,746,000 votes as against 148,000, and by this enormous majority Communism stands condemned in the eyes of the workers of Britain.

A very interesting feature of the discussion was Mr. Herbert Smith's emphatic declaration in favour of the freedom of the British Labour movement from external control. He asserted that he would never "take instructions from Moscow," and denounced the Minority movement and the Communists as "determined to wreck the constitutional unions." The egregious Mr. Harry Pollitt, who has at least the courage of his convictions, caused considerable uproar by announcing that "if orders from Moscow- were in the best interests of the working classes he would not hesitate to follow them." But the best answer to this clap-trap is to be found in the division list. The British worker never likes to take orders from anybody, least of all a foreigner, and all his best instincts and traditions conflict with the idea of irresponsible tyranny incarnated in the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Mr. J. H. Thomas, with his usual adroitness, appealed to the strongest convictions of his hearers by reminding them that the British trade union system is "more democratie than anything in Russia," and this argument undoubtedly carried weight when the vote was taken.

The disastrous defeat experienced by the Communist party at Edinburgh is a good omen for the prospects of "sane and safe" Labour at Home. But the discussion over the Trade Union Act was conducted in a different atmosphere. It is generally admitted that the principal effect of this unfortunate Act has been to unite all sections of Labour against the Conservative Government, and the T.U. Congress therefore was in no humour to consider seriously Mr. Baldwin's appeal for industrial peace. Mr. Bevin suggested that the best contribution toward peace would be Mr. Baldwin's resignation, and the Congress unanimously adopted a resolution to the effect that the greatest hindrance to industrial peace was "Mr. Baldwin's attack on the standards of life and the liberties of the workers." The Congress is evidently regarded by Labour as the prelude to a desperate struggle for the repeal of the Trade Union Act.