TRADES UNION CONGRESS

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XVIII, Issue XVIII, 4 September 1912, Page 8

TRADES UNION CONGRESS

SPEECH BY MR. WILL THOBNE

3* CABL2—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT.

LONDON, Sep. 3. Mr Will Thorne. M.P., in a presidential address at the Trades Union Congress at Newport, blamed the Government J:or defeating the transport workers He declared that the coal strike had brought nationalisation nearer.

The "Scottish dockers' delegate asked the Congress to repudiate syndicalism, but was ruled out of order.

Referring to Lord Devonport's elevation to the peerage, Mr Thorne said that it seemed that the qualification most recognised by the Tory and Liberal Governments was payment into their political fighting funds, to uphold the privileges of the propertied classes. Mr Thorne demanded an eight-hour day and equal educational opportunities for children. Child labor could only be prevented by raising the school age. The religious difficulty could only be settled by State-supported secular education. He charged the Tory leaders with the responsibility of the attacks on Catholic Socialists at the Belfast shipyards. If the Government had done its duty those high-placed individuals would have been put where thousands of Irishmen had been put i!or less violent language. The Franchise Bill did not meet trade union demands. He insisted on adult suffrage, the abolition of plurality voting, the payment of returning officers' fees, simultaneous elections, and proportional representation. He hoped that organised labor would stoutly oppose compulsory arbitration. The wage-earners should" endeavor to secure collective ownership of the land, railways and production, and support an international working class movement to terminate the foolishness of spending half the national revenue on armaments and war debts.