MORE UNITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 114, 15 May 1936, Page 8

MORE UNITY.

MOVE BY LABOUR. industrial groups. SUPPORT FOR PROPOSAL. There has been a revival of the movement which lias been made from time to time for greater unity amongst industrial Labour groups in the Dominion. Ways and means of accomplishing this end were discussed at a meeting last evening of the Auckland Trades and Labour Council, and it was decided to endorse a suggestion that the Trades and Labour Federation should convene a conference with the object of inducing the principal sections of the industrial movement to compose their differences, and to form one national organisation. At present the industrial Labour movement is divided into two main camps —the Alliance of Labour, on the one hand, and the Trades' and Labour Federation 011 the other. The objects of the two organisations are similar, but it is stated that there is a considerable diversity of opinion as to the methods which should be adopted to achieve the objects. A proposal has emanated from the ranks of the Alliance of Labour, to which is affiliated the bigger unions such as watersiders, seamen and tramwaymen, that unity might be accomplished by the formation of a Trades Union Congress 011 the lines of the congress in Great Britain. However, the Trades and Labour Council, which represents the smaller unions principally, considers that in an agricultural country like New Zealand something more elastic is required. In view of the widening of the scope of the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, there is also a move afoot to strengthen the industrial movement by active organisation in the country districts. On Sunday next a big Labour rally is to bo held in Hamilton at which an effort will be made to enrol unionists and to resuscitate in that centre a_ spirit of unionism which has been lacking in the past. Similar meetings are to be arranged farther afield in the near future, and centres where the Labour ranks are to be mustered are Whangarei, Tauranga, Whakatane and Gisborne.