THE NORTHERN ADVOCATE Registered for transmission through the Post as a newspaper. THURSDAY JULY 14, 1949. Upheavals In England And Australia

Northern Advocate, 14 July 1949, Page 4

THE NORTHERN ADVOCATE Registered for transmission through the Post as a newspaper. THURSDAY JULY 14, 1949. Upheavals In England And Australia

The tragic strikes and their resultant dislocation of national and domestic life in Britain and Australia may very fairly be attributed to the doctrine preached by the high priests of Communism that conditions of chaos and misery form fertile soil for revolution. It is only when the people who enjoy the privileges provided by democratic institutions realise the deadliness of Communistic scheming and determine that they shall not longer be made pawns in a sinister game, that the benefits derived from democratic institutions will be properly safeguarded. Tribunals upon which all parties to industrial disputes are represented, and which are presided over by competent legal authorities, should be regarded by workers as institutions whose integrity and usefulness require the strictest protection against the assaults of wicked men, who see in law and order the enemy of the direct action they eulogise.

It may be that industrial tribunals fall short of perfection, but workers

who reflect upon what the principles of conciliation have brought them in the shape of improved conditions during the last half century, should become suspicious when leaders suggest a course of action which, carried to logical conclusion, would wipe out conciliation and arbitration and replace it by the law of the jungle. What is happening in Australia and Britain today provides all the evidence needed to reveal the malevolent spirit which animates the would-be destroyers of democratic institutions.

Cecil Sharpley, one time an executive officer of the Communist Party in Australia, recently revealed the technique employed by the party to provoke civil war such as has been attempted :n Australia during recent weeks. .

Doubtless the same technique is responsible for the upheaval which has occurred in Britain, where a strike by dockers, ostensibly in sympathy with a strike by a Communistcontrolled union of Canadian sea-

men, has compelled the King to declare a state of emergency and employ troops to unload foodstuffs from ships held up at docks. All law-abiding and patriotic British people will no doubt regret as much as the King and the Government do the necessity for the action that has had to be taken, but they doubtless appreciate now the menace

which Communist control of organised labour constitutes.

They probably agree with Sir Hartley Shawcross, the British At-torney-General, that the action of the strikers at the docks is “economic and political treason.” The same statement may be applied to the strike crisis in Australia, for there is a regrettably strong resemblance between the tactics which have led to the upheavals in both countries. The Communists, true to the doctrine of their high priests, have chosen a time when Britain and the Commonwealth arc faced with a financial crisis to take steps to multiply Empire problems by holding up trade and industry. “Economic and political treason” constitutes a mild statement of the case, but it should awaken everybody to the fruits of seed sown by an enemy within the gales. This awakening is evidently taking place, for public reactions suggest that sanity, apart from state action, will come to the rescue sooner or later.

At the same time, it is clear that labour led by Communists in other countries is being called upon to extend the operation of the dock strike in Britain, a development which is not to be welcomed. In Australia the coal miners’ strike has had serious repercussions, the general public having been plunged into a state of austerity which has emphasised the criminal folly of strike action' when the services of a conciliation tribunal was at the disposal of the miners. It is not the general public alone whose sympathy the miners have lost, for influential unions, no doubt recognising the menace to the democratic way of life offered by Communistic leadership of organised labour,' have agreed to have coal already mined transported to and handled in Sydney. If this is done, much of the misery which has been forced upon the people, who have been deprived of light and heat through the exhaustion of coal stocks, will be alleviated.

It is to be hoped that the miners will realise that a strike which does not have the backing of the public cannot succeed, and that they will return to work and so allow industrial tribunals to settle the dispute which Communists have construed as an excuse for plunging the country into a strike which has no justification.