A HOT ATTACK

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 118, 12 February 1926, Page 8

A HOT ATTACK

MR. HUNTER AND THE ALLIANCE OF LABOUR

THE ARBITRATION COURT ELECTION Mr. Hiram Hunter forwards for publication a copy of a letter addressed by him to Mr. Jas. Roberts, secretary of the Alliance of Labour. The communication, with slight excisions is given below. Mr. James Roberts, Secretary New Zealand Alliance of Labour, Wellington. Dear Sir,—ln your reply to my open letter to vou of February 4, you complain that I did not send you a copy. If I had intended to write to you in the usual way I would not have issued an open letter. The reason I did so was to drag you from the star chambei which vou have created in Wellington out into the open because you had not the courtesy to reply to my inquiry for an explanation . . . ano, incidentally, to let the rank and file of the workers know, in the only possible manner, that the Alliance Executive considers the affiliations havf no right to be considered on such an important matter. In this you have aped the attitude of the other officials at the Trades Hall. You indulge in a lot of heroics and display a lot of ability in presenting a cunning misrepresentation of the whole position, but I put up a case for you to answer which you have not attempted .to do, and the rank and file will draw their own conclusions. It is quite evident that I salted your hide, thick as it is, and made you smart to some purpose Had vour executive consulted the affiliated 'unions, and acted upon their instructions I would have treated their expressed wishes with the utmost respect. Your executive notified the unions affiliated that they were to have a free hand in the selection of a workers’ representative, therefore they had not the slightest idea that, the delegates at your annual meeting would be dealing with the matter, so these people merely endorsed your views, and vou announced in the capitalist Press the decision arrived at. Did you have the courtesy to advise me that there would be a meeting of the Alliance on January 28 to deal with a matter of such moment to me so that I could attend and answer any complaint that may have been . made against me ? No, you told unionists in Christchurch, at a meeting, that the Alliance was taking no action because there was no reason why a change in representation in the Court should be made. Further, that the Alliance would not endorse any candidate for election to the Court because it was hostile to the Court and did not wish to be appearing to support it by running a candidate. . . However, the Alliance is merely one section of organised Labour comprising seven affiliations, and as you have not had the decencv to give them a voice in their own affairs, you cannot claim honestly to speak even on their behalf. If yon had them with you then you would be able to control 20 per cent, of the voting strength of the unions—the other 60 per cent, whom you have been condemning as craft organisations as being obsolete, useless, etc., for the last eight years, snd whom yon now have the brazen effrontery to claim to speak for, have the other 80 per cent, of voting strength which will be used overwhelmingly against you. I have called your bluff in the interests of the Labour movement. We have not unfortunately, a national organisation in New Zealand to-day to enable all the workers •to speak with a united voice and we never will have as long as men of your calibre figure as the official heads. I have been thanked on all sides for the stand I have taken against you and your Mussolini methods.

After referring in scathing terms to Mr. Roberts’s part in the jockeys’ strike, and the way the Auckland tramwaymen "were led into the mire”; the way the sugar , workers “were left in the mud,” and the. opinion in Dunedin regarding Mr. Roberts in connection with the British seamen’s strike, Mr. Hunter proceeded:— I myself am not surprised, because I summed you up correctly on June 28, 1916, when I found you out . . . and denounced you to vour face in front of the assembled delegates at a Labour conference. I wound up mv remarks on that occasion by informing those present “that any organisation in which you had a controlling influence would not make any progress.” Messrs. John Dowgray and Robert Semple were with me, heard what I said, and we left the room together. Ten years later, we have ample proof of the shrewdness of my observation of 1916. A lot of people wonder why you and a few more union secretaries are so keen on finding Mr. Monteith a job—irrespective of his fitness or experience. The opinion in Dunedin, I find, is that there is a very strong reluctance amongst you to have an ex-union secretary on your respective doorsteps, looking for a position, and that you would rather he obtained anybody else’s job than vours. Vott state that you cannot tell the Christchurch workers anything about my fighting qualities: No, you are quite right there; they know already, and your dope would not be swallowed by them. They know me, have honoured me all my life, and are supporting me practically unanimously at the present time You’ state that hundreds of workers in New Zealand and throughout the world were being gaoled for the statements thev made condemning war; and yet Mr. 'Hunter could be neutral. Well, my "neutrality” landed me in Lyttelton gaol as the guest of His Majesty, along with two others, whom you know well; this was in May, 1918. Your neutrality must have been the real thing, as I have heard of any instance of your having been thought so dangerous, on account of your advocacy of working class principles, bv the authorities, that they thought vou worth while bothering with. i . . „ Perhaps vou were like 'Brer Rab-bit”—vou-laid low and said nothing in t-'raes of strife. It you did it would be perfectly characteristic. Your statement that I appealed on six occasions for the support of the alliance during the last few months is untrue. I wrote once, on December 10, and you are at liberty to publish all the correspondence on the matter. The crux of the whole matter, and the thing that concerns, not only the workers,' but the community as a whole, is whethei there is to he an Arbitration Court for the settlement of industrial disputes in a constitutional manner whilst industry and eonmercc proceeds as usual, or, whether the country is to resort to the barbarous method of the strike. Labour’s political platform contains a provision for arbitration instead of barbarous warfare for the settlement of international auarreis and the arguments in favour of the latter upply with equal to oivil war witbm the TWtfor.—ls

what a general strike is. You, and a few of your associates, are wild because I cannot be used as a catspaw to smash the Court of Arbitration, but vou Irvc not the pluck yourself to advocate that vour federation’s affiliations should cancel,their registrations. I take, my hat off to the miners unions. They found out . ~., and left the alliance in disgust.. They don-t believe in the T .C. and A. Act, or the Court, but they have had the courage of their convictions and cancelled their registrations. Yours, etc., HIRAM HUNTER. Dunedin, JJebxuary. 9 f , JJ326.