The Press Thursday, October 8, 1925. The Background of the Strike.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18507, 8 October 1925, Page 8

The Press Thursday, October 8, 1925. The Background of the Strike.

The interests threatened by a prolongation of the seamen's strike —the comfort and happiness, even the solvency, of the Dominion —are so important that the political consequences of the hold-up of our export trade are a minor consideration. That there will be political consequences we cannot ignore. The electors will take note of the omission—which obviously cannot be accidental—of the Nationalist and Labour Parties and their leaders to declare themselves uncompromisingly oil the side of the threatened community and uncompromisingly against the men who have been led by Australian revolutionaries into breaking their contracts. Our Labour Party is now definitely on the strikers' side, and the so-called National Party is avoiding the most important national issue that has arisen since it buried its old Liberal colours. If it were, as Labour is suggesting, a question of our pulling chestnuts out of the fire for the shipping companies we should not feel much concerned in the strike. The Dominion's prime interest is nut to "help the shipping companies, but to help itself, and it will expect the companies to share the trouble of rescuing their and our business. But our present purpose is to call attention to the background of the strike. There have been comments upon it which, although a\ little wide of the mark, have nevertheless been directed towards the main fact behind such economic disturbances as this is.

It is certainly not a fact, for example, that the strikers as individuals are consciously serving the doctrine. Many of them, perhaps most of them, have no sort of idea concerning Bolshevism or Moscow, and few if any of them will benefit by a penny from their action. Nor is it likely to be correct that more than, a very few of the Bolshevist agitators are either directly in touch with or financed by the propaganda office of the Soviet Government. Some, however, are so inspired, and financed, and the remainder are willing volunteers in the cause of Bolshevism. The men- in Moscow know their business, and they know the main fact, which is, that the great obstacle to the Bolshevist movement is the British Empire. They could hardly Jielp knowing it, because it is a fact patent to every active revolutionary everywhere —to Walsh and Jdhannsen in Australia, and to the quieter and slyer Reds controlling Labour here. It was mere chance, which furnished the material for* a strike of British seamen, but the Bolshevists throughout tho Empire seized the opportunity at once. Here was the means of striking a heavy blow at the great enemy of Bolshevism. To the striking seamen the strike seem to be only a strike against a reduction in wages; to the* engineers of the' strike it is something much,more important than that. They.would not be greatly interested in a similar dispute aftectingj the mercantile maring of any other country than Britain —and it is significant enough that while British,(ships are, being held up the ships of other nations go placidly -about their business. Now the reasbn for this is that to the "international" Bed, whom you may find as surely in Christchurch as in any city of Europe or America, tlje great obstacle, as we have said, is the British Empire. Ho troubles himself little about' the European States, 'judging (and perhaps rightly) that Europe is a larger Balkans, a congeries of States troubled, volcanic, and unstable, and kept in order, and in a kind of equilibrium, by the influence of the Great Power which holds fast to the rule of law and of ordered progress. This is why, at tho core of every Red's mind, in New Zealand as (elsewhere, there is a bitter dislike of the British Empire, showing itself iu the sneers and reluctances of' the New Zealand Labourite, in the open violence of the anti-British faction in tlie less firmly loyal atmosphere of 'other Dominions, and in the almost maniacal curses of those to whom Britain is foreign in fact as well as in feeling.' It is in this respect that the controllers of the present strike arc as truly the agents of European Bolshevism as if they received a monthly cheque from Moscow. To speak of these men as being engaged in "a plot" against the Empire is to speak inaccurately; it is quite .accurate to speak of them as engaged in an attack upon the Empire. There is no plot about it, since there is really no secrecy. The Bolshevists in all countries feel that the Empire is "the " enemy," some quite clearly, and others vaguely, although their vagueness does not prevent them from helping heartily with whatever may seem likely to injure British interests. And [ they are using the seamen, most of whom have no idea that they are being so used, ns tools in an attack upon the Empire's traUe. This, and nothing less, is the great fact behind the strike. *