OUR BRITISH LETTER

Maoriland Worker, Volume 13, Issue 31, 1 August 1923, Page 16

OUR BRITISH LETTER

Sent by Evelyn Sharp for the Foreign Editor of the "Daily Herald," London. JUNE 6, 1923. British Labour has never been more unanimous than it is now showing itself to be oh the subject of Russia. The Premier has been obliged to tell both the Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party that he cannot possibly reply individually to the senders of resolutions that keep pouring- in from these two organisations all over the country, as well as 'from Trade Union branches of every description. The feeling is'univer-' sal that, whatever opinion is . held about Communism, or about the acts of the Soviet Government, or about the merits of the particular points now in dispute, there is nothing that is not capable of. being settled by negotiation, that a breach of the Russian trade agreement is unthinkable, and that a conference should be called, as has been demanded by Moscow, to settle the question of alleged Soviet propaganda in our Eastern Dominions, which appears now to be the only serious matter of controversy between the two Governments. The reply from Moscow to Lord Curzon's 'last Note is still expected. The wildest rumours have been current as to its probable contents, this in itself showing the keen interest taken; but as a matter of fact, there is no foundation for any of these prophesies, whose only value is in their giving the lie to the allegation that the majority here are anxious for a breach with Russia. The telegram to the Labour Party and General Council of the Trades Union Congress from the Russian General Council of Trades Unions is a remarkable document, compared with the average communication of the kind, and serves to mark afresh the change that is brought into diplomatic correspondence by the advent of this working-class Republic in Eastern Europe. It is a human appeal from the workers —men, women and children—of one country to another; it tells the incident of a working woman who, at a Moscow .meeting .convened for the discussion of the British ultimatum, .summed up simply the Russian policy in the words: "We don't, want to fight; we are too busy to fight"; and it ends by appealing to British Labour "to do all you can to escape responsibility and the curses of the toiling millions for the continued chaos and the new sufferings of war and famine. THE 8-HOXJR DAY. The Hamburg Socialist Conference accepted unanimously the British resolution moved by J. H. Thomas, that the universal 8-bour day be accepted by the new . Socialist International formed at this Conference as a principle and unalterable demand. His warning that there was a strong tendency everywhere among the employers to go back on this principle owing to trade depression, has not only been proved in this country in recent building and mining disputes, but is seen now in Germany where the new reparations proposals of the Federation of German Industries are being strongly criticised by the German Trade Unions, who see an them not only the old story that the workers will still be more heavily taxed than the employers, in proportion to their capacity to pay, but also an insidious attack upon the 8-hour demand from employees for "free" agreements on the question of overtime. International support against this attack will be essential, WORKERS' UNITED (FRONT. The action of the recent Conference of the International Federation of Transport Workers in Berlin, m forming a united front, including the Russians, and electing a joint Council, has called from the Bureau of the International Federation of Trade Unions (Amsterdam) a disavov/al of all responsibility for sucb an "all-in" policy, and a reiteration of its own policy of excluding dissident minorities from representation at its Conferences. In this connection it is worth noting that at the meeting of the International Metal Workers' Federation in London on June 4, although Russia was not included in the 18 nationalities represented, a resolution was adopted stating that the "necessity of closer co-operation in the interests and for the benefit of workers in metals, in all the countries of the world, can best he advanced by the affiliation of all trade unions in all countries to the International Metal Workers' Federation." The time seems approaching when official acknowledgement of the •Soviet Republic by including its representatives in the international organisations of workers, as well as in securing its de jure recognition by the bourgeois Governments, would ap- : pear to he inevitable. WOMEN AND THE INTERNATIONAL. [ The rejection, at the instance of the -German delegation, by the Hamburg

Conference of Dr. Marion Phillips's proposal (Great Britain) to create a special international women's committee, opens up the whole vexed question of the position of women in the Labour Movement. The of the German women, that women ought properly to-be represented by the side of the men on the new Socialist International, and not by a special organisation, exactly expresses the view of suffragists everywhere, but not Of the extreme feminist who is not a suffragist and still' thinks in terms of sex differentiation. The British Labour Party, of course, recognises the principle of sex equality, but in actual practice still encourages the formation of separate women's organisation on the very plausible ground that in this country people are not sufficiently enrightencd to •elect women unless they are separately dealt with in this way. Naturally the German delegation did not understand this, as in their own country (seen in the large number of Reichstag women members) the workers do not thus differentiate. The recent election to Parliament of Mrs. Philipson is a case in point. Largely with the help of workers' votes, she, like Lady Astor 4 and Mrs. Wintringham, the two women M.P.'s already sitting in the House of Commons, has been returned, not on her own merits, but simply as the wife of her husband, who in her case was unseated on a technicality and was not eligible to stand again. The sneers of a portion of the press, on account of Mrs. Philipson's former career as ah actress, have little point in the eyes of the serious thinkers of the Labour Party, who.do not regret that a woman has been elected who earned her living honestly before she married a rich man, but have every reason to regret that working-class votes help to return women like the three M.P.'s already elected, who do not stand for working-class interests, while women like Dr. Marion Phillips and Margaret Bondfield remain outside Parliament. —apparently because they cannot stand as the wife of a former M.P. STRIKES AND POLITICAL ACTION. The present tendency to rely on political rather than industrial action, seen in the workers' International policies, has been demonstrated by the miners' action in waiting for the debate on the Labour Party's Bill to amend the Coal Mines Minimum Wage Act, which comes up during the next two weeks. Conscious of their strength, for they are the biggest and best organised union, probably, in the British Trade Union Movement, they will not attempt Industrial action until Parliamentary power has been tried to the utmost. The Bill in question, if passed, will greatly improve the miners' position, who at present, bound by the terms of an agreement wrung from them in a moment of extreme depression, are really receiving lower wages than before the war, when the miners' wages were admittedly a scandal. If Parliamentary action fails, then. logically, their course of action will be to appeal to the Trade Union organisation to come to their help. There is a good deal of sympathy for the miners on the part of all who study the position, for, while the Ruhr situation has caused a boom in export coal, the men have not benefited in the least and are still subsisting on insufficient wages. LABOUR AND THE AIR LEAGUE. Thanks to the steadily growing importance of our daily press, the workers are well aware of the danger of the new Air League, supported by Lord Birkenhead and others, who held a large London meeting last week to stampede the country into piling up air armaments, as, before the war, the Navy League forced Governments to pile up naval armaments. In the present European situation, such a campaign is provocative to the last degree. Fortunately, organised Labour recognises this.