Grey River Argus and blackball news THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1921. AN ENEMY OF UNIONISM.

Grey River Argus, 19 January 1922, Page 4

Grey River Argus and blackball news

THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1921. AN ENEMY OF UNIONISM.

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There was a time when Labour unions wore forbidden by law, and even now in this country, industrial laws are often designed to destroy, rather than facilitate working class unity. The case of the coal miners proves this. In addition to the law, however, the press protagonists of employerdom take every opportunity to push on the nefarious work of disintegration, as when lately our local contemporary sought to suggest the leaders of the State Miners’ Union were responsible for a loss of wages by the members. It is always under the guise of being solicitious for the welfare of earners that the agents-provocateur' of capitalism endeavour to breed mutual distrust and dissension in the ranks of unionism. Long since, however, have the struggles of industrialism taught both worker and employer the value of unified control in bargaining over conditions. It has remained for the employing class to concentrate their united strength on a world-wide campaign of union-wrecking. In the present case that campaign is brought, home locally a little more noticeably than it even was by the destruction of the National Agreement through the instrumentality of the Arbitration Court. By the Greymouth “Star”, £he public is asked to believe that a refusal to submit to the employers’ dictation has lost to the State miners “thousands of pounds in wagfes.” The Union as a whole decided its policy, but its leaders are alone singled out for this imputation. “So much for the tactics of the miners’ commanders,” says the “Star,” using the term “commanders” without thinking, of course, how it implies the rank and file arc spineless men, who refuse to share the responsibility for the line of action which their votes in meeting pronounced strongly for adopting. In the miners’ own eyes, therefore, there is doubtless no idea of discrediting their unionism, but the evident aim is to suggest to all others that unionism among the miners is a matter of blind submission by workers to leaders who always dragoon them. The talk about wages is so much moonshine, for if our

contemporary were honestly anxious to see the miners treated fairly, it would never have opposed them recently when they stood up for their National Agreement. ’Twas not the money of the miners that it cared about. There is no doubt, one type of union leader who would command the adulation of a paper like the “Star.” lie is the sort, who sooner than displease the, exploiter of labour would sell his mates at any time. When there is advocacy of accepting worse conditions and wages as an alternative to a fight for a principle, it is not hard to discern the advocate’s cloven hoof. The hand may seem the hand of Labour, but the voice is the voice of capital. So much, indeed, for the tactics of plutocrats and their puppets. The Press that always makes its “good” advice coincide with a denunciation of workers’ leaders, has never :• critical word for the bosses, no questioning of their tactics, their aims, their broken promises, or their profiteering. It would teach that in the industrial world the only evil is that species of unionism that has some backbone, and that the sovereign remedy for all ills is a derelict divided working class, who may be exploited for ever with impunity. It matters not whether the profits wrung from local labour go elsewhere, perhaps thousands of miles away, the working class far and near arc the sole target for criticism and gratutious advice virtually to scuttle their unions, by submitting always to the employers. The reason is, of course the incompatibility of the interests of exploiter and exploited. Whoever is not with the worker to-day is against him. There is no moral and there should be no legal right for capital to plunder labour. Workers know that for them union alone means strength. They know such union will ever evoke the keenest capitalist opposition. ’Twill be, therefore, quite clear to every worker that any tears which our local contemporary sheds over loss of wages and union leaders’ tactics arc obviousIv of the crocodile order.