THE "NEW DEMOCRACY"

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 70, 19 September 1912, Page 6

THE "NEW DEMOCRACY"

Makers of the "new democracy" tor© up the Union Jack at Waihi the other day, and sang their international anthem, "The Red Flag,*' to signalise their contempt of "lawless law." We believe that most New Zoalanders must be more amused than incensed by the insult to the British flag, because the deed was comparable with the act of a spoilt child stamping its little chubby foot and proclaiming a revolution against the whole household. The "R«d Dandies" of Waihi and Wellington, and wherever the Federation of Labour is now melodramatically acting, ate merrymakers all. One is at a loss whether to term them "The Tragic Comedianß"— a phrase which the Maoriland Worker applies this week to New Zealand's press (excluding the Worker)— or "The Comic Tragedians,"' but perhaps the latter description would be the more accurate, because there ie more of the comic than the tragic in the antics of Mr. Semple and his fellow "democrats." Once more the Reds have put pen to paper, and another "manifesto" flutters through the streets to encourage democrats of the old school to be democrats of the new school— that is, democrats who must flout and scout the law as lawless as soon as it protects "the other fellow." In our news columns to-day our readers may peruse a summary of the Federation's appeal "to the workers of New Zealand." The imaginations of the penmen have run red riot in that quaint document. "The president, vice-president, and a number of members of the Waihi Workers' Union have been gaoled thus to gag them and break th© strike. They were carrying out time-honoured and lawful methods of picketing," says the manifesto. Happily New Zealand has no law permitting the harassing of law-abiding men— no law to allow strikers to vexatiously interfere with men who honourably accept work which the strikers decline to do. But because New Zealand has a law to protect men who have a right to be safeguarded while exercising their right to work, a cry of "lawless law" is raised by the "new democrats"— and the Government is summarily ordered to release men who gaoled themselves because they would not give even a nominal surety to respect the law which properly empowers the representatives of the public to protect any member whose peace is destroyed by "peaceful pickets." The work of these pickets ia euphemistically described as "educative" by the strike leaders. That word "educative" revives memories of tho "corrective" work done in older countries long ago. In every part the manifesto is comical where it is not inaccurate, and inac> curate where it is not comical. In some passages the two features are combined. The "star" sentence is this:— "The Federation of Labour points out the forces endeavouring to smash it are the Goldowners' Association, Employers' Federation, Chambers of Commerce, Arbitration, the law, the police, the press, the blacklegs, and the weakling so-called Trades Councils and their party and paper. Let the workers ask why this formidable fusion." Who, then, are the workers? The Federation practically confesses that workers outside the Federation.—and the outsiders are the vast majority—and the public generally are against it, but the "new democrats" are right and all other democrats, slaves of "lawless law," are stupidly wrong. So much for the "humorous "manifesto." Now for the Maoriland Worker's tirade about "men jailed." The Worker incidentally deifies Solidarity and offers up prayer to the god of the "new democracy." Here is an invocation in the article : — "Solidarity I Benign and divine solidarity! Make us and all workers realise thy good and thy omnipotence." After this introduction to the Red Fedoration's deity, one may turn to passages less awe-inspiring but not less interesting. "As far as ftew Zealand is cohcerned," it is written, "the hour is heroic for those who have courage to view Naked and Unashamed Destiny, or who can grasp the glory of swinging into line with a Tendency. Each for each are both, while to hinder either is marching backward." What does this mean? If the Destiny of the Reds is to be as bright in hue as their flag (as the prophets claim), why should the revolutionaries need courage to view it Naked and Unashamed (the capitalised adjec* tives refer to Destiny)? Perhaps one needs to be a "new democrat" and a worshipper of Solidarity to catch the true thrill of these mystic words. They appear to be part of a ritual. Naturally The Worker says much about the "martyrs" of the new religion. "Lest these Waihi men be deemed to be undergoing quixotic martyrdom," ex* claims The Worker, "we ask our readers to note the significance of being 'bound over.' " It means perpetual police surveillance, the being spied upon and spat upon at the whim of the uniformed weapon of espionage, the surrender of those civil rights without which democracy is a farce, and the foregoing of a privacy held to be institutional in home and social life." Is there not a delightful touch in that phrase "civil rights"? The men who were worried by the strikers were not supposed to have "civil rights" apparently, because they were not of the religion of the "new democrats." They were merely raw material for "education" to the higher plane of the millennial "democracy." Yet The Worker and the writers of the "manifesto" purport to be speaking seriously 1