SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1913 UNITY IN UPROAR.

Free Lance, Volume XIV, Issue 680, 12 July 1913, Page 6

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1913 UNITY IN UPROAR.

the tittle Cabal That is to Rule the Roost. THE proceedings of the "Unity Congress" of militant Labour bodies that is now sitting in Wellington a re fantastic to the last degree. That, perhaps, was to be expected. Nor need the fantastic side of things be stressed unduly. If Mr. Payne, M.P., to take one instance, holds and declares that the Unity Congress takes him seriously, that may merely be a delusion, gentlemen of Mr. Payne's type in politics being notoriously prone to subjective hallucinations of their own importance. The more serious proceedings of the Congress are what the public would do well to consider; for in those proceedings there is a certain element of menace. * * * * First of all, there was that socialistic preamble. It was plainly drafted according to the most approved Bed Federation "principles," which means that it set every standard tradition of political economy at defiance and was nicely calculated to foster class hatred and general disturbance to the highest possible degree. The Reds hold that employers and employed are natural enemies, classes in hopeless antagonism, and not co-operators to any common end. Which is pure Syndicalism—if to So vile a recent growth as Syndicalism any such adjective as "pure" may be applied, ■ * * * * The Reds believe in the abolition of the wage-system, holding (apparently") that the earnings of the working classes, the labourers and the artisans, would come, as a matter of course, from the Blue Moon. It is very pretty, if you happen to have the necessary twist • but it is not sane. Mr. David McLaren is still sane, on a general view; for he plainly held that the preamble was abominable, and had the courage to say so. In the end, the preamble was rejected ; but it was rejected by a dangerously narrow majority. * * * * But the purblind extremists that have come together in the deliberations of the Unity Congress have had no majority for the sane and safe view in certain other matters. In one regard the Congress has deliberately sold the birthright of the workers for a mess of sorry potage. _ They have agreed to leave the final decision in the matter of any atid every projected strike to a small committee of Labour-bosses. In these hands the dangerous weapon, of the strike is to rest absolutely. * * # * Poor childish Labour, which has squawked so idly and so long about being under the thumb of the employer, has readily consented to put itself under the thumb of a prejudiced and arrogant few. Better 8 thousand times that they should remain under the thumb of the employing class; but to pretend that the militant Labour unions of New Zealand have been under that thumb for many years past-, if they were ever under it at all, is to pretend a thing that on the face of it is absurdly tm-

trues. One body of Labour men remained sane on this point. Seeing, that the mad decision Was inevitable, the railway men withdrew—struck suddenly and effectively against the mania for strikes. * * ■* * In rebelling against the authority of a. clique of hungry irresponsibles, the railway men have done a and excellent thing -, and if they continue in the same mind, one great branch of the labouring class is safe. The decision to leave this great matter in the hands of a little pack of professional agitators amounts to a flat negation of the basic principles of democracy. When a general strike is proposed, the men who are to pay in blood and treasure—to pay through their families and their homeinterests imperilled —are to have no voice in the decision: not even the final voice of a secret ballot. The Unity Congress, regarded as a part of the genera] conspiracy of the Red Federation, is really doing very well.