The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED DAILY. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1925. MR HOLLAND AND THE STRIKE.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 10139, 27 October 1925, Page 4

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED DAILY. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 192 5. MR HOLLAND AND THE STRIKE.

• All fair-minded electors who availed themselves of the opportunity o hearing the Leader of Red Lahoi at the City Hall on Saturday night mil he in agreement at any on_one point, and that is this: that Mr Ho - land put up a very weak case m oefence of the seamen’s strike. AH Holland attempted to camouflage his party’s position on the matter by sug<ms ting that Parliament should have been invited to discuss the seamen s grievances or, alternatively, that n should have, been.,alio wed to attend the conference convened by tlie J. rm t Minister which, unhappily, PT O^. abortive. On his part, Mr Holland, however, did not oiler the slightes piece of evidence which might go t show, that the Parliament of this Dominion could intervene in a asputo which can be settled only in Motherland. As a matter of tact, he knows that any discussion m the House on the subject would have amounted to a pure waste or time. Nor did Mr Holland attempt to say that lie could have done anything that would have been worth while at the conference convened by Mr Coates that he could not have done in the role of Leader of the Labor Party at any time after the strike bioke out. It is unquestionable that the hulk of those present must have agreed with Mr Holland that the wages at present paid to the seamen cannot be held to he handsome. IJut what was Ins remedy ? It was this : that if the owners would not-unakc up the amount in dispute then the Government or exporters should do so. "' His counter-attack on the shipowners was, however, far from convincing seeing that whilst he. talked a lot about the amount in profits derived from tlie industry he left lus audience quite in the dark as to trie rate which it represented on the capital invested. Mr Holland is, or course, an adept at concealing tlie other half of any story which is needed to shed a true light over the whole of it. That Labor’s sympathies have all along been with the seamen, right or wrong, was, it may be recalled, made plain by Mr Armstrong, Labor member for Christchurch East, whilst the House was in session. Underthis heading all that need be said further is that, if the seamen have a just cause, the place where it requires to be pleaded is at Home. In the circumstances it was superfluous on Mr Holland’s part to say that if he had been invited to the conference between the shipowners and the seamen he would not have adopted the attitude that it was the seamen who were responsible for the strike. What was very noticeable at this point was that Mr Holland’s remarks supporting as they did tlio “To Hell with Agreements’ ’ doctrine were received very coldly, as they deserved to he. Everybody no doubt agreed with him wheii he said that even when the current dispute is settled the settlement will amount only to a temporary patching up of the problem. On this point, Mr Holland made it clear that, if he and his colleagues had had any say on the matter, the nature of tlie “settlement” would have been far from permanent. What lie told liis audience* was this: that the seamen could have been ‘ induced to take the ships Home if the Government had agreed to pay them the amount in dispute out of the Consolidated Fund or had permitted the exporters to provide it! If, of course, the Government had agreed to anything of the kind a similar line of attack would have been resorted to‘when the next batch of liners arrived, and so on for all time. Truly Mr Holland was right when he hinted that a temporary settlement was all that could lie effected. He- imight, irdeed. fairly have described it as a “boat to boat” settlement! Can the rank and file of the Labor Party wonder now why it so happens that the other sections' of the community reckon that some members of the X Z. Labor Party or some other organisation outside this Dominion have all along been in collusion with the seamen in Conner tion with the strike? Too- thin altogether was Mr Holland’s suggestion that it was the shipowners, not the seamen, who planned that the hold-up should occur in these waters at such a critical time as regards the export trade. It has been a cunning piece of scheming on the part of the Red agitators behind the strike, but they omitted to take into their calculations tlie fact that Mr Coates is the leader of a strong Government, which would refuse to allow the producers of the Dominion to he bled to enable the strikers to. pursue their fight asrainst the British shipowners. We are confident that the producers of this Dominion will, on Polling Day, display their thankfulness on account of not requiring to —btr- jit the mercy of_ either... militant Reds or the weak-kneed NationaiistsX with one oi; two out-, standing exceptions, aril, ' like. _Mr Smith, .adopting an attitude wiiTt’h fails to show that they appreciate the seriousness of the latest Red blow at the interests of New Zealand.