LABOR AND THE WAR

Evening Star, Issue 16469, 6 July 1917, Page 7

LABOR AND THE WAR

UNIOmSM CUESED WITH FADS. [By Our Parliamentary Reporter.] WELLINGTON, July 6. “The Labor section of our community—l refer to tho organised trade union Labor—is cursed with having in their ranks a number of people who are not true trade unionists, and who have come into the movement only for the sake of pushing their own fads and their own follies,” said the Hon., John Barr in tho Legislative Council yesterday. “It is those people wo find defying the laws of the country. It is with these people that the Government find it necessary to take extreme steps. It is these people who object to Conscription. ’ For the attitude of tho true trade union Labor and our Labor as a whole refer to your rolls of honor. You will find that trade union leaders have fallen on our battlefields fighting with their fellow-workers in the national cause. They have laid down their lives for their fellows, as they had previously. They were ready to defend their country as they had defended their trades, as they had fought for their industrial rights and tho rights of their wives, their children, and their fellow-workers. In their fight for their industrial rights their trade unionists demanded that the men who will not voluntarily join them in their battle against injustice shall bo conscripted. They say to tho non-nnionist: It is vital for our social, our moral, and our industrial welfare that you should belong to our organisation. You must fight with the trade army. In this Dominion particularly the trade unionists have abandoned the voluntary principle. They have asked always for powers of compulsion, for the conscription of the workers outside the Labor army. No trade union has accepted as satisfying the limited measure of compulsion granted by the Arbitration Court in their preference clause. I believe in industrial conscription as demanded by tho trade unions. I believe that when, the Empire’s call comes it is right to apply the same principle of Conscription to the needs of the nation. If men have become so careless of their national life, so steeped in selfishness that they will not listen to their country’s call, then it is for tho country to place them in tho organisation required for the national defence.”