THE AUSTRALIAN STRIKE

Marlborough Express, Volume LI, Issue 198, 22 August 1917, Page 8

THE AUSTRALIAN STRIKE

'TLAIN SOCIAL SABOTAGE."

■ The Sydney Bulletin, which in tho past has skown a strong leaning to Labor unio^sm, writing of the strike, says: "Thi^-rilce is: just plain social sabotage. The men who went on strike had not even the excuse of possessing a tangible grievance. They were not seeking the redress of any wrong. Stating the case fpr themselves, the ' only justification they could produce 'was an assertion that the time-cards would lead to. grievances in the future. Asked to prove this, they declined the invitation. Asked to give the system a trial and produce the grievances for inspection ■when they arrived, they declined some more. They simply "insisted on denying the right of their own Department to institute a change of internal management, and on asserting their own right to either have their own way or to deal out stoush to the community. On the basis of the strikers' ease not being bogus, all this meant that a crowd of rebels was •trying to browbeat the State into '.submission, through fear. On the ib'asis of the strike being merely a _nachine-made disturbance, it meant that several thousand men had been prepared to blindly follow like jumfbucks whereever a coterie of dis- : gruntled wire-pullers chose to lead them. In either case it meant that the. public peace and convenience were made the sport of a truculent, intolerant push. If public ownership of utilities common to the general citizenship' cannot save tiie people from assaults like this, where in the name of common-sense are the advantages of the experiment to be looked for? This paper does not know, and has a suspicion that no one else fcnows. What it does know is that 'the strike makes a mockery of everything the Labor movement and industrial unionism has stood for in the past, and turns into jest the whole ".superstructure of Labor legislation and administration. There ' are perilous times ahead of Australia. Economic problems of a character the population has never even dreamed about are in the making. Is there anyone who imagines that these will he met arid dealt with by the maintenance of such industrial conditions as are prevalent to-day ? It is very doubtful, for these conditions are a sham from top to bottom, and the Labor movement is rapidly becoming a sham, too. As it is to-day, it stands for one thing only—bashing a public which earns hostility by leaving itself open to attack. No State ever _ stood that sort of thing indefinitely, and Australia- will not, .because Australia has to live."