GREATEST EFFORTS PLEDGED

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 182, 30 April 1941, Page 8

GREATEST EFFORTS PLEDGED

Workshop Employees

A WORKERS’ WAR, SAYS MR. HOLMES •

A plea for an even greater output and better co-operation from the workers of New Zealand, to help rapidly to defeat the Nazi tyranny, was made' by the representative of the British Trades Union Congress, Mr. W. Holmes, in an address to Hutt railway workshop employees yesterday, Mr. Holmes stressed that this war was a workers’ war. Above all, he said, everybody must remain democrats and loyally support the Government elected by tire people, leaving petty grievances for settlement when the war was won. Under the Nazi heel there would be no liberty for the worker.

A motion expressing the Hutt Valley workshop employees’ determination to play their part to the full in Britain’s war effort was unanimously adopted. The workers of New Zealand, said Mr. Holmes, were of the same stock as those of England and had won tlie same good principles. England was proud of the work being done here. A great international trade union movement was his ideal; and he believed that the industrial workers throughout the world could make a better job of managing their affairs than any other section of the community. Rich and powerful classes in Germany had organized to defeat social, democratic and trade union movements. Brutal methods which forced the workers’ leaders to submit to terrible suffering had destroyed the workers’ rights in Germany, Poland and other countries.j Unions and Democracy.

In England, Mr. Holmes continued, the trade union movement was warned to prepare for a struggle, and it decided that when the call came it Would stand firmly behind the Government elected by the people. Workers realized that unless they respected democratic methods, they could not expect others to do so, and they knew that their trade unionism could hot exist under a dictatorship. Trade unions in England had voluntarily given up privileges they had won because they knew that if this fight was lost everything was gone. “There is not one per cent, of defeatism in England,” proceeded Mr. Holmes, “and all wish to carry on the struggle till victory is reached. London is not as bad as is thought,” he said. “People do not run to shelters like rabbits, and at the ‘all-clear everybody comes up smiling. We laugh at invasion because of the work of the men in the factories in the last eight months. The one thing which saved England in the May crisis was the repair and engineering shops. Now,” he continued, “great factories are coming into operation; air factories and shipyards that will build this year materials superior to the enemy’s. “The workers’ freedom is at stake. The workers have saved England up till now. It is a workers’ war. Therefore, on behalf of. the British Trades Union Congress; I ask you workers to be with us till the end, to win liberty and then, with combined knowledge, to see that there is no more war.”

The Minister of National Service, Mr. Semple, thanked Mr. Holmes for his inspiring speech. War, he said, was wrong—fundamentally, morally and spiritually, as everybody knew —but when the enemy came and challenged freedom, then it must be fought. Workers’ United Determination.

The general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Mr. L. Mellvride, then moved the following motion, seconded by the general secretary of the New Zealand Railway Tradesmen’s Association, Mr. S. Ingram : : — “That this meeting of public Servants engaged in the Hutt workshops, who are members of the trade union movement in New Zealand, thanks Mr. Holmes for his inspiring message of goodwill from the British workmem We ask him in the name of the trafle unionists of this country to convey to the British workers on his return fraternal greetings, and to express our united determination to pull our weight and to play our part with the British workmen in tbeir titanic struggle for liberty. Their cause is our cause: their fight is our fight; their victory is our victory. We express our admiration for the courage and fortitude of the people of Britain < who, through their grim determination and indescribable suffering, are upholding the democracy which represents the 1 rights of the people to be masters of their own destiny and captains of their own souls. They have won. the admiration of the world. We are with them in every phase of the struggle. We pledge to them our loyalty, all the strength we possess, and all the treasures at our command, in order that they, along with us, will come victoriously put of this titanic struggle that has been forced upon us against our will.” “We say to you on your departure, Mr. Holmes,” said Mr. Mellvride, “fl safe voyage and God speed to the land that you loved and served so well and that you have fought for so heroically. and we trust that before you reach the shores of the laud of your birth the blood clouds that have hovered over the British Commonwealth of Nations will have disappeared, and that peace and goodwill will ouce more be established over all peace-loving people under God’s blue sky, and that Nazism and Fascism, the. worst form of tyranny the world ever knew, will have vanished for all time.” Later the official part), which included the Minister of. Mines, Mr. Webb, the general manager of railways, Mr. Casey, and Mr. Thorn, M.P., toured the workshops and Inspected Bren-gun carriers. The secretary of the Wellington Trades Council. Mr. P. E. Warner, was also presenL _____