The Press. Wednesday, May 9, 1917. "Labour."

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 15896, 9 May 1917, Page 8

The Press. Wednesday, May 9, 1917. "Labour."

• The Jatest returns in connexion -with the Federal elections appear to indicate that tho Nationalists' clianco of securing the desired majority in the Senate is better than it at one time appeared to be. Should the indications be justified in the final result, the Nationalists will control both Chambers, and tho Tesult will perhaps bo regarded as "a defeat for Labour," and so e proclaimed by the P.L.L. extremist*. This will be a mistake, of course, but it is ono -which may have useful results, for it will furnish tho ground for discussion and reflection upon the meaning of "Labour',' in tho dictionary of politics. In Great Britain the political labels, although 6omotimes they hare little correspondence, as to their significance, with their origins, aro on the whole clear enough. At anv rate, people know pretty clearly •what is meant by them to-day. Even "Labour," as applied to tho Labour Party in Parliament, has a clear enough meaning: it means tradeunionism, as distinct from plain Socialism or from the pseudo-Labour sections, generally controlled by doctrinaireß

whoso connexion with Labour is mental and abstract only. In Australasia, however, where political terms aro much misused —where men obviously Radical can bo called "Tories'* in print —tho term "Labour" stands urgently in need of some clear definition. "The " workers," wo shall be told, formed tho party that opposed Mr Hughes; and "we have been told that "tho "■workers" were tho opponents of tho Citizens' Association candidates at our own little election the other day. Everyone knows that the workers, even

in the naTrow sense of people who work for wages, comprise the majority of tho population, and that tho "New " Zealand Labour Party" speaks for only a small section of the workers, and for only a section even of tho body of organised labour or trade-unionists. Originally the <r Labour movement" in New Zealand did in a measure give a means of self-expression to a largo section of tho workers who work for wages. It did not insist on Socialism as tho cure for everyone's troubles; it did not dream of sabotage or striking on the job or the repudiation of contracts; and it was loyal without thinking of the possibility of being disloyal. It was nothing liko tho "Labour move- " ment" of to-day, which is only a disloyal, anti-national movement, in which the forces making for loss and injury to the workers and to the nation have smothered any remaining vestiges of tho old trade-union impulse. Tho "New Zealand Labour Party," either under its own namo or under any alias, is not representative of "Labour'' at all. and tho success that that party obtains at a local or at a general election is as little a triumph for the workers as for the Mahometans. In our own City Council, in our New Zealand Parliament, and in the new Australian Parliament, the workers aro better represented than they would be if the anti-social Red Feds had command in those assemblies. They would bo still better represented if these antisocial and anti-national extremists had no plaro in local or general government at all. For the number of Red Feds in tho City Council or in Parliament is not the measure of the representation of Labour or tho workers. On tho contrary, these men misrepresent the workers almost as completely as loyal men can be misrepresented. They do not represent Labour, unless Labour is anti-national and antiImperial, and we all know that Labour, meaning tho mass of those who do labour, is neither of those mean things. In Australia, as wo have said, the victory of tho Nationalists over the Political Labour League may help towards an understanding of tho facts that lio behind the Red Feds' fals© claim to represent tho workers of tho nation; and we believe that a better understanding will como to New Zealanders also. * The "Labour" leaders are doing much to help tho peoplo to understand +ho enormity of tho imposture that has been practised in this country in the name of tho workers in recent rears.