POLITICAL MATTER.

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1911, Page 3

POLITICAL MATTER.

(Published by Arrangement). An article culled from “The Voice of Labour” of November 3rd, 1911, which paper is the official organ of “The N.Z. Labour Party. “THE LED TERROR.” “ANARCHISTS IN . NEW ZEALAND.” “DESTRUCTION OF LIFE, PROPERTY, AND MACHINERY OPENLY ADVOCATED ON STREET CORNERS.”

Some forty years ago ,on the floor of the International Congress the Labour movement definitely and authoritatively, and for all time, declared for political action and constitutional methods and expelled from the movement the Russian anarchist Bakounin and his handful of fanatical followers, who were even then attempting to foist the policy of “direct action” and forcible revolution on the movement. Bakounin, the apostle of chaos and destruction, raged through Europe like a fiery comet, denouncing Marx as a “fakir, an opportunist, a tool of the capitalists, an intellectual prostitute,” and all the rest of the terms which are to-day applied to the Constitutional Labour Party by the modern successors of the Bakounint school, the Revolutionary Socialists and Syndicalists. Bakounin’s teachings of “direct action,” violence, and the general strike, fell on fertile ground in the, exciteable minds of

Southern Europe, and for a time the Anarchists terrorised Europe. Outrage lollowed outrage, the cowardly bomb, the assassin’s dagger, the blow in the dark, alternated in rapid and ghastly succession. But if the Anarchists were determined so was the law, and aided by the friendly Social Democracy the authorities succeeded, so it seemed, in stamping them out. But it was only in seeming, for the Anarchists realising that much lay in a name, changed their coats, and once again they have reappeared, this time within the ranks of the Labour movement, under the name of “Syndicalists,” “I.W.W.ites,” “Direct Actionists,” and in this country “Revolutionary Socialists but though they have changed their tactics there is the same old hatred of political action and ordered progress. The same old epithets of “Fakir,” “Bourgeois Socialist,” etc., etc., the same old incitement to violence, specific and general, tlie same old hatred of the State in any shape or form. So far they have thrown no bombs nor murdered anyone in New Zealand, but all their teachings load in this direction, and we have not the slightest doubt that, judging by what took place outside the Opera House last Sunday night, that it is only a matter of time until some fanatic, maddened by these teachings of the leaders of the Anarchists in New Zealand, seeks to achieve notoriety by murdering an opponent. ,v Of course the velvet-tongued Ben nett himself would not dream of attacking anyone; he prefers to preach a doctrine, which, falling on the minds of ignorant dupes, incites them to do he ‘slugging’s/and the same was true of Recluse, Most, Turner, and the other Anarchists, who preached their damnable doctrine in a ‘culchawed’ accent.

At their meeting in the Opera House last Sunday evening, Semple raved against Professor Mills, the Unity proposals, the Labour party, this paper and all those generally who refuse to swallow the Anarchist doctrines of himself and his Anarchist friend Bennett. Semple’s ‘speech’ from beginning to end was a torrent of vituperation and a direct appeal to all the lowest and basest passions of his audience. “Let them send the military against us,” he shouted, “we will show them that we can do something in that line too.’ . Now, no one had ever suggested using the military, and Semple’s language was only coldy calculated to arouse the brute in his audience, for Semple is not an excitable speaker who loses his head. Again refering to Mills, Semple, after insinuating that Mills was a ‘hireling of the capitalist class,’ went on to remark that ‘we will deal with these people mentally or physically’; a'direct incitement to his audience to use violence against all those connecled with Mills, an injunction which the Revolutionaries proceeded to carry out as soon as they got out on the road by surrounding twp pf the Unity Campaign special workers who had beep distributing a wholly inoffensive leaflet containing a true report of the Bennett-Mills debate, Violently attacking those men, the Revolutionaries closed in around them like a pack of raving wolves, shouting, “We will deal with that little b Mills, too, when we get hold of him.” The two tU’}ify workers were struck on the face and mouth, and there bein«T no police about it was with fhffiouhy that they escaped with their lives. individually the Anarchists »re, as Anarchists always are, a set of cringing cowards, bujt giypp ft (Iftfk night or the confidence of numbers and. fancied security from detection, and then blazes forth the same spirit of insanity that in 1798 dragged innocent and helpless women to the guillotine in the streets Uf Pans? fffid that later bore aloft in frenzied and goldish triumph their dismembered bodies and entrails on the ends of pikes.

(jne oi phe Special Workers attacked is a iii«T)})ber of the stall of this paper, and we deliberately charge Semple and Ids smooth-fou-gued” colleague Jicnnett, together with the whole of the Amuailifot nutH t in New Zealand, the concern that calls itself the New Zealand Socialist Party, and that other bluffing conI corn that calls itself the New Zealand 1 Federation of Labour, with being responsible for this wanton outrage. J On the street corners tire most wild] and inflammatory Anarchist garbage is labled out Sunday after Sunday. , The genera] .strike sabotage, the dcst ruction of machinery, js Qpenly preached. “Don’t go out on strike : and lose your pay!” yelled an Anarchist the other Sunday, “Stop on the 1 job and take a bit out of the machmi ery, take away the essentia] parts and burv them !” In America or any other country a man preaching such infernal doctrines would quickly find himself in a place when lie would get a ■ chance of some cpiiet reflection. _ Nor . are the Anarchist papers less violent in their advocacy. The local sheet advises the workers to take an exam-

pie from the , Chinese revolutionists, and this is the advice of the crowd who are howling down .military train-

ing. fJ’hA Maoriland Worker, another Anarchist production, has the following in an editorial, which for exhibition of frenzied and hysterious fanaticism in print would be bard to equal in any other Anarchist publication ever issued from the Press ;

“Our forefathers stamped through blood and fire to conquer the epithetmongerers —rand many of us can recall the days when the progressives of the days sweated and-agouised under the meaningless derision which begat

‘laughter and applause.’ TAivE CA RE! BEWARE-” “Take care,” “Beware.” Take care, beware of what? The vengeance of the Revolutionists, of course —of the bomi), the dagger, the pistol, the blow in the dark, and the howling mad fanatical hooligan, fed on such mental diet as Semple, Bennett, and the Maoriland Worker ladle out to their blind followers. Beware, Take Care. These words arc now familiar to all our staff. Time and again we have been told by

individual local Anarchists to “take care,” “don’t g 6 too far,” the inference being that if this paper refused to endorse the views of the Anarchists, personal violence would be offered, or perhaps they would put into practice the destruction 'of machinery plan. The personal violence has been offered on several occasions. Exposed by this paper the Anarchists have sought to evade the charge of being opposed to political action by making a pretence of running candidates for Parliament in various parts of the coun-

try, and by the way some of these are in opposition to Labour Party Candidates. That this running of candidates is all a blind to cover the

real revolutionary designs of the Anarchists becomes plain, when we say that none of these candidates have a political platform of any kind, nor

have the Anarchists as a group any political platform. “Anarchists in all countries despise politics,” as something savouring too much of constitutionalism and the hater “State.” One of these candidates in this City is Savage, who is out for City Central, and we say, right here and now, that although there is no Labour candidate in the field that it is the boimdless duty of every Labourite in City Central to vote against Savage. Every vote giveiyto any of the so-called Socialist candidates anywhere in New Zealand is a vote for anarchy and disorder, and against the true interests of Labour.

1 In no way have the Anarchists shown their fiendish and intolerant spirit more than in their savage attacks on Professor Mills. The attacks on the staff of this paper we discount on the grounds that perhaps a personal element has entered into the matter, but no such excuse can serve

in the case of the attacks on Professor Mills, acknowledgely the greatest orator in the world, living or dead, a man of altogether exceptional talents, an acknowledged authority in the world of Labour, author of that monumental political work “The Struggle for Existence,” a work second only in depth of analytical and constructive thought to Marx’ “Kapital,” and in point of cleverness of exposition, superior to ‘Kapital,’ Prof. Mills, in whom close on one million Socialists in America showed their perfect confidence by sending him as accredited delegate to New Zealand on a lecturing tour, and knowing that lie was largely instrumental in bringing about the great Unity Convention at Indianapolis in 1901, by which some seven different factions warring with each other in America, were united into the great and all powerful United Socialist Party of America. &

The Trades and Labour Councils of New Zealand, anxious to end the factional strike in New Zealand, deputed Mills to organise Labour in New Zealand into one great organisation. Mills accepted the work, full of enthusiasm, and sincerely convinced that even the irnpossibilist Anarchistic minority would accept the proposals, or at least give them impartial consideration and suggest any amendments op deletions which they might in reason think lit. But evidently Mills was unaware of the fanatical nature of the Anarchistic section. Mills was also evidently unaware that they were of the same school as a similar group in America which in 1901 refused to join the United Socialist Party at Indianapolis, and which to-day in America fights the Socialist Party of America wit hall the same bitterness and the same phrases and methods that the Anarchists in New Zealand and Australia fight the Ln-hpur Party, MUh was evidently further unaware that Bennett, the leader of the Anarcho syndicalists in Now Zealand, is a disciple of Do Leon, leader of the same group in America, and that just as De Leon fought the Unity proposals in America in 1901, and still continues to fight the American Socialist party to-day, so would Bennett fight Unity in New Zealand and denounce Miljs as all that wgs vile. But Mills, conscious of his Own sin cerity, and full of a desire to unite LghmiL ami evidently giving the An-

archists credit for the same sincerity, felt sure that the Unity proposals would be impartially considered and studied, their advantages seen and

accepted. But he reckoned without the fanatical intolerance (rf the Anarchist's’"far from accepting the proposals they point blank refused to consider them. Bennett, as the high priest of the Anarchist inner circle, issued an edict that any member oi his party giving serious consideration to the Unity proposals TOld bp px communicated, or words to thal effect, and such is the blind faith ol his hapdfnl of fanatical followers thal

they seemed to think that the Anarchist pope had only to signify his disapproval of the proposals to ensure their receiving no further consideration from anypnc in New Zealand, fp.r yo.ur genuine fanatic moves and lives in a little world of his own, and to the local fanatics, the Opera House on Sunday night i§ the whole of New Zealand and Scott Bennett is the voice of all the people in New Zealand. 'As a matter of fact, he is the voice of himself and a comparative handful. However, the fapatU's were omfe cprtiiivi that now the Opera House high priest had damned the Unity proposals they were now in very truth damned indeed, absolutely, irrevocably, as ever any council of old damned heretical proposition, and Mills, was an heretical proposition to the followers of the one and only prophet.

But lo and behold it came to pass that the Unity proposals were taken up enthusiastically by the Labour piuty and the majority of the Unions of New Zealand, while thousands of men and women were pledging themselves to devote time and money to further the proposals. At this the rage of the prophet and his people knew no “bounds, and the more the Unity proposals prosper the madder they are becoming. Left with no tangible argument against the Unity proposals except the usual arguments of the Anarchists against Parliamentary action and ordered progress, they are now making a last desperate rally to stem the flowing tide of what they call “Accursed Labourism,” by attacking Mills’ character, but the most virulent and scandalous abuse of Mills, and by advocating and carrying on physical violence to those who are pushing the Unity proposals. Ignorant fanatics who know no more of Socialism, or any other ism, than they know of common courtesy or civilised manners, get up on street corners and denounce the author ot ‘The Struggle for Existence,’ as a ‘fakir,’ ‘a humbug,’ ‘a twister,’ ‘a liar,’ an ‘intellectual prostitute,’ and ‘a dirty hireling of the capitalise class,’ etc., etc., ad nauseum. In all this violent scurrility and general madness Labourites generally will recognise the futile shrieks of baffled rage and defeat.

It is not much of a tribute to the prophet’s method of imparting instruction that after two years’ arduous schooling of his followers the only argument they can put up against the Unity proposals is a torrent of Billingsgate or a blow in the face. However, the prophet is a great admirer of “direct action,” and perhaps he will feel rather proud than otherwise of the fact that fifty of his followers could muster up enough “class consciousness” between them to attack two of what lie calls “Labour fakirs” in the darkness when they hoped to escape recognition. Perhaps he will feel that after this magnificent exehibition of solidarity,” that “the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class is a sure thing, and the Revolution only a matter of weeks. And, again, perhaps he won’t, for who can read the mind of a prophet? All Labourites and true, friends and sympathisers with Labour will sympathise with Mills in the vile attacks to which he is being subjected. The scurrilous misrepresentation and threatened violence of the Revolutionists will serve only to defeat their own ends and open the eyes of the workers to the real nature of the propaganda which is being preached' in this country under the name of Revolutionary Socialism. If the Revolutionaries do these things when they are only an insignificant minority, what would they do if they had the power? To regard such people as Socialists is a libel on the name. True Socialism is eminently sane and reasonable in its purposes and propaganda. The genuine Socialist is the man who, recognising the laws of evolution, and the limitation of human nature, seeks to transform society by gradual and neaceable measures through the Legislative power of the National Parliament and Municipalities. Such a Socialist is Professor Mills. Of such Socialists is the Labour party in Australia and New Zealand. The Labour party sternly sets its face against anarchy, violence, or disorder of any kind, and when in office uses the whole force of existing institutions to secure that ordered progress which the Anarchists are continually endeavoring to set aside for violence and revolution. All over the world the .same internal struggle between those who stand for political and ordered progress and those who stand for anarchy and revolution is going on. It would be a bad day for the workers themselves, if ever the anarchists got the upper hand. The workers in New Zealand and Australia will be wise to sternly oppose any affiliation of their Unions with the party of revolution, and wise also to refuse to vote for candidates, nut forward by that party in any election. To vote for such candidates is only to grease the steep road that leads down to pandemonium and chaos.