LABOUR IN BRITAIN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15923, 8 May 1912, Page 8

LABOUR IN BRITAIN.

' A social awakening is taking place in . the Mother Country under the stress lof industrial strife. The portents are not easily read in the columns of the I newspapers, but that a momentous j change is occurring in public opinion 1 and in tho narrower channels of class prejudice is made plain in a hundred ways. The right of the worker to be assured a living wage and even something more than that, is being admitted in quarters whero the shibboleths of “supply and demand” and “freedom of contraot” have long held undisputed sway. The trend of thought can hardly be illustrated better than by the admission of the London “Times,” in these days a very stronghold of Conservatism, that “the root idea of syndicalism—of trade ownership and control —is not only unobjectionable, but excellent.” “It was the parent of co-operation,” adds the journal, “ and will eventually be realised in copartnership. It is by far the most rational and feasible form of Socialism.” During the course of the coal strike, it is true, many of the Unionist newspapers clamoured for repressive measures against the workers, and Mr Balfour made a dramatic re-appearance 33 the spokesman of the Opposition in order to move the rejection of the Minimum Wage Bill. But the “ Observer ” was driven to admit that the protest against concessions to the strikers was a mere empty beating of the air. “ The official Opposition had no alternative policy,” it said, in-indicating what Mr Bonar Law and Mr Balfour had done. On the other side of politics the “ Nation ” stated the lesson of the strike very plainly. “Wo are passing from the era in which the subsistence of any class of our working population,” it said, “ can be left to the uncontrolled fluctuations of supply and demand, and the higgling of the market. Something far more 6acred than political supremacy is threatened. It is the luxurious life of our times that is in peril—the sacred week-end, the champagne standard, the costly motor, the pleasant combination of town and country life, the leisurely enjoyment of unlimited and unearned wealth, all that is the reverse side of the sempstress in her attic and the docker turned away empty from the gate.” Nobody imagines, of course, that Britain is going to make revolutionary reforms in her industrial system at short notice, or that the success of the miners represents a comprehensive victory for labour. But undoubtedly the leaven is working. The principle of tho minimum wage has been established in the Mother Country, as it was long ago in the younger dominions of the Empire, and with the foothold that the advance has given them and the aid of the progressive elements in- ■ the political groups the British workers will move upwards steadily from the slough of despond where to-day millions of them struggle in despair.