LACK OF CO-OPERATION

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1930, Page 10

LACK OF CO-OPERATION

the Clydeside group and six others abstained from voting in the House of Commons on a division challenging the Labour Government's unemployment policy. The fact gives particular point to the cabled statement by Mr. J. H. Thomas that ■

the problem of unemployment could never be solved by any Government unless that Government could carry with it the hearty co-operation of the workers. . "

The Clydeside abstention is a sign of failure to co-operate. It has affected even a Labour Government. It can be much more embarrassing when the Government Avhich is principally charged with the solution of the problem has to encounter political hostility from the start. Yet this is a social problem involving the wellbeing of the very people whose cooperation is sought. If they fefuse to help, how can it be demanded that the rest of the community should make sacrifices? In apportioning the blame for failure also, a Government from which co-operation has been withheld cannot^ be made the only scapegoat. Those who' say that a Government has failed must ask themselves what they have done to avoid that failure. •