LABOUR UNIONS AND POLITICS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 154, 26 March 1938, Page 10

LABOUR UNIONS AND POLITICS

A decision which will be read with very general interest is the refusal of the Clerical Workers’ Union at Auckland to be dragged at the heels of the Socialist Party organisation. The issue turned on a proposal that the union should affiliate with the New Zealand Labour Party—in effect that a union created for industrial purposes should direct its energies and its funds (or part of them) to serve the ends of a political organisation. Under compulsory unionism men and women of all shades of political thought have been forced by the law to join a union and become labour unionists in order to retain their jobs. Though they have been deprived of their individual liberty in this respect in industrial matters their freedom of political thought ,and action still remains, and they would be foolish indeed if they took any step which might tend to undermine this right of British citizenship. There are some people who think that all industrial unionists belong to the Socialist Party. This is far from being the case. In most instances union officials are members of the party, and seek to use their unions as recruiting grounds for the party following, but we have not yet reached the stage of compulsory Socialism. The principle of industrial unionism is collective action for the redress of any grievances that may exist and the improvement of working conditions. This principle has nothing whatever to do with politics or political parties. Politics, like religion, is essentially a matter for the private judgment of the individual citizen. The danger to be feared is that the individual, as was the case with religion in the past, may be victimised for his political opinions. . That is what has been happening in certain European countries since Communism, Fascism and Nazism entered the scene and deprived the individual of his political freedom and the right to his political opinions. Political intolerance in these countries has become in fact as intense and vindictive as was religious intolerance in former years. All who value their political rights and freedom must be on guard against any similar tendency in this country. . , The Socialist Government in New * Zealand introduced compulsory unionism in the hope .of forcing non-union men and women to come under the domination of union leaders favourable to the policy of the Socialist Party. A serious aspect of this campaign of political proselytising is that under compulsory unionism the individual cannot take up the attitude that if his union joins a political party he will resign his membership in justification of his right to his own political freedom of action. If he did that he would lose his job. Nor could he decline to subscribe to the party fighting fund, or its Press organ, except at the risk of possible victimisation. J. he action of the Auckland Clerical Workers’ Union in making the stand it did against the intrusion of party politics into its affairs deserves more than passing notice." The stand taken was not merely a refusa to permit an industrial union to be diverted from its legitimate purpose, but it was in defence of the vital principle of democracy t a every citizen, whether a Labour unionist or not, has the ng ° exercise a free and unfettered individual judgment on political questions.