ALLIANCE OF LABOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18026, 27 February 1922, Page 5

ALLIANCE OF LABOUR.

WHAT ARE ITS AIMS? SURROUNDED BY MYSTERY. DANGERS OF ONE BIG UNION. (Contributed by the Welfare League). In the last issue of the Maoriland Woil-er it is stated that " Four organisers are visiting branches of the Post and Telegraph Officers' Association with the object of explaining the constitution of the Allianco of Labour, and of educating members in the benefits of affiliation." This is interesting, in Mew of the fact, which the post and telegraph officers ought to know, that the'greater number of trade unions in New Zealand are not affiliated with the Alliance of Labour. A great many trade unionists regard ths alliance combination as a postive danger to the labour movement of the Dominion. We find that a good deal of mystery surrounds this alliance. Its aims are explained one way by such men as Messrs. M. J. Mack and W. T. Young, and in quite another way by Messrs. J. Roberts and L. Glover, of the Waterside Federation. At one time it is against the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, at another time for it. We know leading newspapers that have tried to secure a copy of the constitution of the alliance, and'have so far failed to do so. The legaue has re-:,,vv'.:\-.!!y a.iked for a copy, but has not yet secured 01.3. Messrs. J. Roberts and L. Glover, in an interview with the Timaru Herald, stated that the aims were :— 1. "To have the Parliamentaiy representatives of 'the people elected by groups of individual trades, from wharf labourers to bankers, rather than by the present haphazard method of geographical representation." 2. "To give control of the manual carrying out of the different industries to 1 the worker," I 3. "To confine industrial disputes to the department in which they originate." : It is perfectly clear that aim No. lis [ political, and yet we find Mr. M. J. Mwk, president of the alliance, writing to the New Zealand Times, of the 14th December, 1921, that "the alliance takes no part, in the- political activities of the New Zealand Labour Partv. They confine themselves to the industrial situation." It is surely an utter sham for a i° dy if°i say its aim is to revolutionist the whole Parliamentary irystem, and that it confines itself to the industrial situation. What the Post and Telegraph Officers' Association is being urged to join is an alliance having a political revolutionary policy of exactly the same character as. the old Red Federation, which the alliance has replaced. Further proof of this is presented, in an article s-ipplied by Mr. J. Roberts, secratary for the alliance, in which he says :~Clause 2 of the objective of the New Zealand Alliance of Labour is: "The collective ownership of the means of production and distribution and the control of the industries by the workers who operate them in the interests of the community." The agents of the alliance profess that it has now 40,000 members, and thst it is seeking to include all national labour unions and federations, together with the Civil servants of the Dominion. It is to be the "one big union," labour oligarchy which will dominate by force of numbers. Mr. W. Livesey, late chief clerk to the* Miners' Federation of Great Britain, in his recently published book, " The Mining Crisis," shows that the one big unionism is a very big bluff on the public and a big fraud on the workers. Everywhere it has resulted in: (1) The placing of poetical, revolution in the forefront of the industrial programme. (2) The withdrawal of self-direction from the rank and file of the workers and enhancing the power of the officials. (3) The creation of a labour bureawracy which challenged; thp State and imolved the workers in impossible contests from which they h'*d to withdraw with (jreat suffering. What the post and telegraph officers and all workers would do well to consider is that one big unionism means strength- | ening the yestod interests of official heads; that it has recently created conditions of untoid_ hardship in England by its impracticability and that the individual workers are cutting their own throats when they allow the power of control, negotiation, and settlement to' go out of their own hands into the one big unionism, which in practice is- "too big officialism."