A SOCIAL SAFEGUARD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19133, 26 September 1925, Page 10

A SOCIAL SAFEGUARD.

The idea of organising "the third party," when a general strike is in progress, is not new. It has been put into practice on many an occasion, as soon as industrial strife menaced the general public with serious inconvenience. What is novel in the organisation now formed in Britain is its creation, ahead of any particular need, of a permanent means of checking the national injury that a general strike inflicts. It has been sometimes urged that there is no third party or that thero should not be, when employers and employed are at loggerheads. That is true only in the sense that nobody can be wholly unaffected. Experience proves that, outside the disputants, there is a large body having no partisan share in the struggle, and this.body, suffering heavily as the battlefield ex- j tends, cannot be blamed for taking steps to protect itself. It simply ! does its duty to itself, and incidentally performs a service to the whole nation. The contestants are ; often too blind or callous to give a thought to any interests beyond their own immediate ends. A strike, of course, becomes ineffective in direct proportion to its increasing range, as many Labour leaders have been at pains to explain. It is doomed to break down under, its own "accumulating weight. But, ere that demonstration of its inherent folly is furnished by events, widespread damage is inflicted on wholly innocent people. Hence arises the justifica-' tion for an organisation "non-party, non-political, unpaid, and not formed for the purpose of opposing legitimate trade union activities." To charge its members with being partisan "strike-breakers" would be foolish and futile. It is a very necessary stand-by plant, to be called into operation when the ordinary social mechanism has been wrecked by lawless interference. It may be thought that its working would be hindered by the difficulty of enlisting volunteers to maintain the nation's vital" services by such extraordinary means, but nothing is more certain than that eagerness to this < sort. of duty would increase, * step by step, with the expansion of a strike. That expectation is borntt out by facts. . To New Zealanders it. will be of special interest that the new organisation's executive , includes Ealrl Jellicoe and the Earl of Ranfurly. It is an idea worthy of wide adoption.