LABOUR.

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 December 1919, Page 8

LABOUR.

RECONSTRUCTION AND ; \ UiNiTY;, , (By “Rewanuii”)

The voice of the people is the voice of a god. Extremists can fool all the people some of the time, and, can' fool some oi the people all the time, but they can’t 100 l all the people all the time. Up to date tiie extremists have made, or attempted to make, at one time and place or another, every mistake that it is possible to make, and when more mistakes are invented they will be made nse of also. Generally a section of people have done this, because they thought their gods told them so, but the voice of the people comes out of the thick end of the tfumpet, because the voice of their god blows into the thin end. The New Zealand miner has .lately been trying* to work himself up to a degree of martial ardour unprecedented even in the annals of unionism or democracy’s opposition to Capital. Some of the so-called leaders have been making, speeches which moved a certain section of Labour to wild delight, but the sober-minded worker is dubiously shaking his head. Enthusiasm in a cause is a fine thing to have handy, especially in the young. The main thing for Labour today is to ask itself the question, How shall we reconstruct this battered fold of Labour; how shall we gather up the fragments one by one, and then re-do the work as been undone? We say to ourselves, “Oh, hard are the tasks life gives us from the hour of birth till death.”

Reconstruction lias been the soul of Labour from time immemorial, but tbe so-called chiefs that are working on behalf of the Extremists preach destruction, pure and simple. * Sane Labour, which includes in is ranks many leading economists, men of scientific political training, and men of high Qualifications, make definite proposals to reconstruct and produce a New Zealand in which C 3 paen may be as rare as the late war proved them to be common. The retrospective sorrowing* kind of grief at failure, has never been known to have constructive power, so let us begin on ourselves; begin this day and call on inspiration and belief, and then let, us grasp true Labour's thoughts and principles and build and reconstruct out of what has been left. We pride ourselves on our vigour and health, and hlso our power to do our bit, but the pilfering parasite of Bolshevik principles creeps in by stealth, and keeps the honest, skilful and true unionist, poor to satisfy his own selfish ends; these men who obstruct all the principles of Democracy by using autocratic means and methods to satisfy the grasping and unholy ideas they have of keeping the worker poor. These are the men whp are found unfit. At the same time true Labour must not give up the game or say that all hope is gone. Out of such chaos that has been tried ofl> this last few weeks, how can Labour’s trite aims, ambitions and ideals be made to bear fruit with the mailed fist, the nailed boot —the' emblem of the I.W.W. —the tramp of boots without intelligence in the top-piece, the so-called leaders playing to the galery, playing to the gods, playing on the feelings of the untutored toiler who has not had in his younger days the benefits of an elementary education for various causes. These are the men this parasitic element play upon. The sole aim of this paid parasitical agitator at the present time is to keep the worker poor,' and we have rather too many in our midst. His sole aim is to keep honest Labour in a state of ferment, and by so doing have a permanent job. Lafayette summed up the Bolshevik agitators of his day as cowardly cannibals; Walpole considered that no such barbarities had ever been committed as by this detestable band. The only people who have dared to speak up for this movement are the contemporaneous equivalents of the I.W.W. movement,.-and they do it in fearful whispers in their clubs and private meetings. They long for a time when honest Labour and wages will be extinguished in Capitalistic blood, and then life will be one long go-slow. Labourites of this school have to talk this silly and poisonous trash, even if they know it is a fable, because they are in a cleft stick. By little and little, by ignorance, by making wild promises on the spur of the moment, and by following the line of least resistance, they have become .the “Less Labour” party, or the “No Labour” party, or the “Slow Labour” party. “The prominent men who stood for Labour have quitted, or have been forced out, and are now denounced as rene-

gades. The Slow-Labourites have come in and taken the name, and the chance of this gang o|> leaders of preaching the doctrine of more work and keeping on terms of reasonable (civility f with the em-. ployer—-whether State or private —or else starting of essential industries by co-operative effort is very remote. Not one of the Slow-Labour leaders of to-day has started anything by co-opreative effort or proposes to do so, or are they capable of dong so. The idea of a system under which there would be no employer, but only themselves to blame in case of failure is too terrible. As for making terms with private employer, the verbal stock-in-trade ■of the “SlowLabour” leader is that the employer is an incurable enemy, and as for declaring that tEe community must do more work or better work, or both kinds of work, it is for these “Slow-Labour” leaders the most of all. These charlatans lead the New Zealander into the green pastures of loafing and ; they teach him an immense self-satis-faction and self-pity; also an immense adpairation for themselves. Tliere are people in'this country who live in hope of such an era. About a year ago this mob of upheavalists w r ere eagerly circulating the news that this glorious thing. had arrived in the Dominion, and New Zealand’s revolutionary' day was “just round the corner,” but past events have proved otherwise. Extreme Labour, through its highest official has emphasised its plea for support, and that if that support was withheld Extremists would express themselves in some other way. That means to say that instead of reconstructing the fabric that has been left it will turn its attention to matters of destruction such as “go-slow,” Bolshevism, anarchy, sabotage, and I.W.W. methods to relieve its sordid feelings, whereby the whole community must suffer, and thereby lose the sympathy of the public in every instance. The said sympathy in which Labour in all its ambitious must be retained at whatever cost; for if public sympathy is withdrawn from the sacred cause of true and sane Labour, then indeed Labour goes bankrupt. It is Indeed true that an injustice is being done to Labour, but it is being done by those who claim to be its leaders, those of the paid element. The true Labour party has been desperately striving to keep up its atitude of respect for Democracy, and not the principles adopted by these so-called leaders of Labour, who have shown that their aims and ambitions are as tyrannical, and autocratic as ever.

We Labour men who study this vital question, not through magnifying glasses, but from an economic cause, say that the imperfections and disharmonies of our social and industrial fabric are apparent to us all, in very truth they thrust themselves upon the most unobservant. Further, I might say that Extreme Labour is not a class party, but a party out on its own. For instance, we all know that there are more Labour men in the Liberal parly than Labour men in the Labour' party; that \is very evident, but this new school of thought which has been arriving in New Zealand this last few years (and had to work in England for about three shillings per day, and when they arrive here are guaranteed ten shillings at the least) Utopian ideas get possession, of course, and they want the cost of production, also distribution, and other initial expenses to be handed over to them as well as their wages: this is where the Bolshevik principles creep in. Before this task which greets our startled eyes. Labour’s heart trembles, troubled and afraid, so with leadership to succeed in the world of Labour is to lay on individual shoulders the burden of success. When men have attained to> leadership, to a position *vated above the rank and file, more is expected of them, more of

tv, more of conscience, mof those aspirations that feed the flame of lug'll resolve. In Labour circles public confidence is hard won, and quickly lost. The repository of that confidence must never fail, the abyss of execration and contempt yawns beneath the pinnacle of approbation and applause. Then leadership will have won confidence; then it will have acquired reputation; its very name will be a continuous promise, which it must never for one instant fail to honour. It is just that the holder of Labour leadership should be judged by so unrelenting- a standard. Its arguments will be received almost without personal security; the calm judgment and trustfulness that the bearer of a high reputation possesses will gain the confidence of the masses, and sympathy would not be found wanting. Let us begin with ourselves; begin this' hour on our unity scheme and call for aspirations. Let true Labour have faith and hope and also courage, in the large laboratory of the mind, work out this scheme of reconstruction, We may not be able to lift each stone out of the mud, but we can start on the foundations toward building the new movement of unity in the Labour World where men are kind, and each thought, each impulse does its paft.