UNIONS AND COURT

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 36, 11 February 1926, Page 4

UNIONS AND COURT

ALLIANCE OF LABOUR

REPLY BY MR. HUNTER.

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.")

DUNEDIN, This Day.

Mr. Hiram Huntor has addressed the following open letter to Mr. James Roberts, secretary of the Alliance of Labour, in reply to his communication, published in "The Post" on Tuesday:—

"In your reply to my open letter to you of 4th February, you complain that I did not'send you a. copy. If I had intended to write, to you in that way I would not have issued an open letter. The reason I did so was to drag you from the star chamber which you have croated in Wellington out .into the open, because you had not the courtesy to roply to my inquiry for an explanation, and to let your affiliations know how you and certain of your associates have acted, and, incidentally, to let the rank and file of the workers know in the only possible manner that the alliance executive considers the affiliations have no right to be considered on such an important matter. In this you have aped the attitude of other officials n't the Trades Hall. You iudulge in a lot of heroics and misrepresent 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 and made you smart to some purpose. Had your 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 you 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 28th January 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? Did you not tell the unionists in Christchurch at a meeting, ' that the alliance was taking no action because there was no reason why a change in representation of 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 decency to give them-a voice in their own affairs you cannot claim honestly to speak even on their behalf. If you* had them with you, then you would be able to control 20 per cent, of the voting strength of the unions. The other 80 per cent, whom you have been condemning for the last eight years, and! whom you now have the brazen, effrontery 4o claim to speak for, have the other;-. SO per cent., .of voting strength, which-will be used overwhelmingly against you. I have called your bluff in the interests of the Lab-, our movement.

"We have not, Tfnfortunately, a na-: tional: organisation in New Zealand today 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 head. I have been thanked on all sides for the stand I have taken against you and your Mussolini methods. V:, :>

Mr, Hunter sharply criticises Mr. Roberts fox the action he is alleged to have taken in connection with certain strikes and disputes, and goes on to say:—

"I myself am not surprised, because I summed you up correctly on 28th June, 1916, wten I denounced you to your face in front of the assembled delegates at the Labour Conference. I wound up my remarks on that occasion by informing those present that 'any organisation in which you had controlling iniluence would not make any progress.' John Dowgray and Bobert Semple were /with me and heard what I said, and we left the room together. Ten years later we have ample riroof of the shrewdness of my observation of 1916. „. . •

"Yon state that you cannot tell the Christchurch workers anything about my fighting qualities. No, you are quite right; there they know already, and yonr dope would not be swallowed tby them. They know me, have honoured me all my life, and are supporting me practically unanimously at the present time. "Ton state that Tnmdreds of workers in New Zealand and throughout the world were being gaoled for statements they made condemning the war,' and yet Hunter could be neutral. "Well, my 'neutrality' landed me in Lyttelton Gaol as. a 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 never heard of any instance of your having been thought so dangerous on account of your advocacy of working elaas principles by the authorities that they thought you worth while bothering with. c ... "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 10th December, and you are at liberty to publish all correspondence on the matter. "The crux of the wholo matter, and the thing that concerns not only the workers but the community as a whole, is whether there is to be an Arbitration Court for the settlement of industrial disputes in a constitutional manner whilst industry and commerce proceed 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 quarrels, and arguments in favour of the, latter apply with equal force to civil war within the nation,. which is what a general strike is. You and a few of your associates aTe wild because I cannot be used as a cat's-paw to smash the Court of Arbitraton, but have you the pluck yourself to advocate that your federation's affiliations shonTd cancel their registrations? I take my hat off .to the miners' unions. They; don't believe in the I.C. and A. Act or the Oonrt, but they havo had the courage of their convictions and cancelled their registrations."