The Shipping Strike.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17609, 11 November 1922, Page 10

The Shipping Strike.

It has sometimes happened,-when industrial trouble is brewing, that the engineers of the trouble have stated that the duty of perseverance was forced upon them by the obligation to meet the challenge of "the capitalis- " tic newspapers." They have declared; that is to say, that they were j" provoked" into fighting. Even this I poor excuse is wanting in the case of the shipping strike, which threatens | to dislocate the coastal communications of the Dominion and to inflict loss and hardship upon the public. Speaking for ourselves, we abstained from a word of criticism until yesterday, hoping that the strike movement would not spread, although it was from the beginning manifest that the seamen were violating the spirit, if not tho letter, of their agreements with the shipping companies. It is now plain that the strike is a concerted plan, and it is »also, unhappily, quite likely that the consequences of the men's rebellion against the terms of the recent award may be very unpleasant ifideed. The position is one which has become familiar to the public in recent years: it is a refusal by the seamen to accept the judgment of an animpeachably fair and just tribunal/ set up in the interests of the workers, and giving judgment after hearing all the arguments adduced by the men's representatives. The average man, no matter how ready he may be to sympathise

with the organised wage-earner's desire for higher pay, recoils from the dishonesty and essential lawlessness of those who submit their claims to the Arbitration Court, and, reject any judgment which does not grant what they ask. This dishonesty and disrespect for the principles of law and order are aggravated by the fact that the BtriMng organisations generally hope to set their will above the law bv causing hardship and inconvenience to the public. The men who are now seeking to paralyse the maritime communications of the Dominion belong to that section of organised Labour which controls the Labour Party. It is not the moderately reasonable and pacific unionist whom the Labour leaders aim to please. Their trust is in the militant wing of unionism. It is to a perception of this fact that the Labour Party can ascribe the deep distrust with which all moderate and reasonable people regard it. Just now the Labour politicians are busy proclaiming their sanity and mildness. Nobody, you would imagine if you believed them, could be more lawabiding and temperate, more fair, or more in love with orderly aud constitutional ways. If their nicely-modu-lated tones have deceived anybody, these credulous ones will have their eyes oponed by the shipping strike. As, we have already pointed out, a shipping strike at the present time, when honest work and peaceful co-operation between all sections of the community are necessary in order to complete the recovery of the Dominion from the depression which is passing away, is as anti-social an act as could be imagined. It must cause much unemployment, great loss to many small eulti- | vators, and hardship to the general community, which will find supplies short and prices rising if the' strike lasts for more than a few days. One result of the strike, we should say, will be the' hardening of publfc opinion against the Labour Party and all those politicians who are inclined to ally themselves with it.