LAWLESS LABOUR

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 145, 16 December 1913, Page 6

LAWLESS LABOUR

' The oratory of the strike has recently suffered from a serious decline in vigour. This result is partly due to the decline of the high hopes with which the cam paign was opened. The imagination of the orator is not to be enslaved by a prosaic regard for facts, but if his appeals to the emotions of his hearers are not to fall absolutely flat they mußt be based, or must appear to be based, upon something that is not notoriously false and impossible. Six or seven week* ago the picture of an army ofv>vovkers marching to the rescue of the strikers from the toils of the capitalist -was received with rapture by the unthinking, because its absurdity was concealed by its correspondence with their sanguine hopes. To-day such a picture would excit© laughter instead of enthusiasm, because the blindest of the dupes of the Red Federation can now see that it is utterly beyond the bounds of possibility. We are speaking of the latitude of Welling, ton, where the strikers' appeal to force was met after a brief interval by so overwhelming a display of force on tho part of the community that the aggres- . sors collapsed almost without a struggle, and the dream of introducing the millennium by violence was completely shattered. But it is interesting to obsorvo that the chastened note of our own, strike orators is not imitated by the outsiders who have lately arrived to supplement their flagging energies. The West Coaßt of the South Island, which was the birthplace of the Red Federation and is its chief stronghold in the present struggle, made some astonishing conI tributions to the eloquence which was provided for the benefit of the strikers on Sunday last. If the delegates to tho Federation's Conference from the West Coast are to be beKeved, the Utopian vißion which was conjured up by the exuberant imaginations of some of the Wellington itrike leaders at the beginning of-th* M,uif*lgn lvi ACtuftlty bpn

realised in that liappy land. According to these authorities, the Federation has won a glorious triumph °" the West Law and order have ceased to •rule, tho strikers are iri full possession, and have trampled both under foot. The chief authority for this revelation of the true inwardness of the Federation's gospel is a Mr. Hunter, who, so 1 far as we are aware, had not previously figured before a Wellington audience. His candid exposition comes very opportunely, at a time when even Mr. Hickey has been singing small and endeavouring to convince the Australian workers of the sweet reasonableness of the Federation. I Mr. Hickey i« now «o modorato that he no longer talks of tossing agreements to hell, but the real red gospel is put forward without disguise of any kind by his colleague from tho West Coast. "Might is right" according to Mr. Hunter, an<J |>hat is the policy of the Federation where it frps the necessary power to carry it out. ••' As far as the | West Coast was concerned," said Mr. Hunter, "the Strike Committee was in control there, and strike law was the only law in force. All civil law was suspended, #nd the only law that counted was the law the strikers wanted. , .' '. When there was talk of opening the port the Strike Committee sent up into the bills and a hundred men came down. They arrived in the dead of flight, and, four abreast, they marched through the streets. These' men ware prepared to act if they thought necessary. 1 ' "Prepared to act" can mean nothing else but prepared to fight and prepared to murder. Mr. Hunter proceeded to challenge the Government to send a . thousand special constables to the West Coast, in which case the strikers would be prepared to meet them with a thousand equally good men. What do the amiable people who have been pleading for peace with the Federation of think of such talk as this— talk which, according to tho speaker, represents the actual facts of the position that the Federation has brought about where it is strong enough to do bo? Can they not see that this is a case in which war to the knife is a necessary preliminary to an honourable and lasting peace? It seems to us that war muet be pushed further anil mor« vigorously on behalf of society against these criminal tactics than has yet been the case. They must be put down with a high hand. The King's writ must, at whatever coat, be given as free currency on the West j Coast as in other pares of the country. A prolonged closing of tho State coal mines and the reopening of the other mines by Arbitration labour are points to which attention should be turned at once.