The Grey River Argus THURSDAY, May 22, 1947. MUDDLE-HEADED CRITICISM OF LABOUR

Grey River Argus, 22 May 1947, Page 4

The Grey River Argus THURSDAY, May 22, 1947. MUDDLE-HEADED CRITICISM OF LABOUR

J\ affirming last night that the (lovcrnment will not submit to such as think it may be bullied in industrial disputes, the Prime Minister added that neither would it submit to hopeless reactionaries. The latter species includes foes of the workers who are always trying to identify the Labour j\lovement with Communists, though much less as candid critic than as inveterate enemy. Here there is tangible evidence, as, for instance, the following, last evening, ’in a local publication: —“In view, however, of the influence which Communists on the West Coast are permitted to exercise in connection with the local Labour pub-, lication. particularly when it comes to using its columns for shabby political trickery, it may well be held to be a matter for serious conjecture just how long t]ie national organ will dare to continue to be so outspoken’’. Paid of this allusion is overt—a quotation from the “national organ’’ that New Zealand Communists are “linked with a world organisation from which they take their most important instructios”. But so covert is the allusion to the “local Labour publication’’ as to mystify any reader in the utter absence of any evidence to justify this resort to spiteful epithet. If there be any evidence, why suppress it? The public is able to judge fairly whether we have tried any trickery, -whether in reference to Communists, “fellow travellers”, or anybody else. On the contrary, where criticism lias been advanced, it has been accompanied by the reasons, whether good or not; and the practice of suppression scorned. There is a suspicion that the accusation’ arises from nothing connected with the question of Communist influence in the ranks of Organised Labour, but rather from something connected with journalistic antipathy towards those ranks, and, in particular, a protest against such antipathy on behalf of Organised Labour which was, in the first instance, denied publicity, and -which, when it did meet the public eye, gave the show away. Leaving aside, for the present, the question of casting slurs without anything to justify them, it is nauseating to read naive essays in patronage of Labour unionism, with unctuous observations upon its potentiality fiyr good in a community where its membership in actual fact is the very foundation of the economic welfare of its critic. Workers arc as good as assured that they have, as such, no business to unite politically, but should return to their status of a century since and should regard wages and hours as their onlv concern. If in.dus-

trial unionism to-day has a stature which its biggest opponents are scared to measure against thair own dimensions, the only unfortunate fact is their ignorance of the reasons, and especially of nidustrial history. The basic impulse for the organising and cohesion of the wage-earners everywhere is the effect of capitalistic industry, more specifically machine production, in exploiting their energy. The start of the movement, from the organisational standpoint, was the deprivation of workers in thousands of their employment by machinery—marked historically by the Luddite riots, which saw between a dozen and a score of men hanged in one day in one English county, as a way of terrorising their fellows against wreaking vengeance upon the machines which pitched them mercilessly into abject poverty. The course of history ‘political as well as industrial, has been said, perhaps cynically, . to exemplify more faithfully than any other passion that of revenge If the industrial system, therefore, is nowadays characterised by a greater spirit of discontent and a disappearance of docility, the cause lies in the heartless manner in which hitherto that system has subjected the proletariat to mechanisation alike in hours, conditions and remuneration. Employers may now grow vocal about offering special inducements for extra effort, but workers feel their professed altruism at bottom may be only as mercenary as was the Draconian code of other days which made the struggle for subsistence the auction block of wages. No doubt there has latterly been a revolutionary reversal of that code, and the' owning classes have come to feel that labour is economically the prime factor, not machinery, money, or the mere token of wealth. Workers are well advised to enlarge their sense of responsibility to the whole community, especially as they have so widely achieved, and so much more widely will yet achieve political, or governmental . influence. It is no service, however, if they are told they are being organised to possess more than their constitutional rights in this manner—told they are being made ready, in fact, lo exploit some future possibility of a chaotic situation. If, indeed, there be shabby political trickery, this generalisation at the expense of the organised workers is exactly the type of it. As the Prime Minister remarks, the Labour Movement knows its duty to the whole community, and will continue to discharge that duty in spite alike of the bullv and the reactionary.