THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MAY 10, 1926. THE STRIKE'S APOLOGISTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19323, 10 May 1926, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MAY 10, 1926. THE STRIKE'S APOLOGISTS.

Nothing in the present crisis in Britain is more instructive than the shifts to which some prominent Labour leaders are reduced to justify the general strike. They do not believe in it. They have put on record, in days when calm thought was possible, their opinion that it could never be a weapon of reform. For this opinion they gave reasons that did more than satisfy themselves ; those reasons satisfied others, and remained unassailcd by any leader of equal prominence among the workers. Now these particular leaders arc on the horns of a dilemma. They cannot very well eat their words, addressed not only in carefully-written books to the general public, but also spoken to large bodies of workers regularly assembled to discuss policy; nor can they reiterate them at the present juncture, and so by implication, if not by direct speech, denounce the general strike. To repudiate their former utterances would expose them to overwhelming reply, in which their reasoning, as cogent today as when it was earlier cmployed, would be crushingly turned against them by thoughtful and observant fellow-citizens. To reiterate their former opinion would place them in open opposition to the promoters of the strike and lead to its almost immediate abandonment. It is obvious that they dare take neither of these courses. Instead, they search for a way of avoiding them both. They cannot very well keep altogether silent, for they are either in Parliament or aspire to be, and they are under necessity to keep themselves in favour with electors of Labour persuasion, even with those of the red revolutionary type, without whose support they can neither retain nor gain seats. Their embarrassment is patent to all unprejudiced beholders. An inviting refuge appears to them in the idea that this general strike is not what practically everybody sees it to be. It began in an industrial strike limited to the miners. It may end in an industrial strike limited to them, when the general strike notices are cancelled. But at present it is a strike with much more than industrial bearings. It aims to bring the whole social organisation of the country to a ruinous collapse. The attacks on the press, on food transport, on essential services generally, proclaim its real nature. Labour spokesmen in the Commons have admitted the implication of these attacks. Mr. Lansbury chides the Government for spurning the offer of the trade unions that the strike should not apply to essential services. There is open talk of a second line of attack, directed en masse against the people's food. The Workers' Union has withdrawn facilities for distributing food supplied by well-known caterers. As the days pass it becomes crystalclear that what Mr. Ramsay MacDonald once called "the childish dream of revolution by paralysing society" is the strikers' mastermotive. Debarred by his previous utterances from applauding that motive, he endeavours to prove that the strikers arc not actuated by it. His plea is too thin; nobody will accept it. Even as a piece of verbal jugglery, his denial that the strike has any political or constitutional significance fails to be diverting, let alone worthy of serious attention. He has his answer from his own party in the House, from the Clydcsiders who made him dance to their music when he was Prime Minister and was reduced to humouring them that he might retain office. He says this is not a grave attack upon law and order, but only a friendly game of bagatelle ; nobody need get nervous; everything of any importance is perfectly safe. They say it is war, and there is no mistaking the meaning they give that word. Is he right, or are they? The happenings of these days make answer easy. If further confirmation were needed, it would be found in the words of Mr. Thomas when addressing raihvaymcn at Hartlepool some time ago : "The suggested mass attack by all the unions must by the very nature of things be an attack upon the community as a whole." Could words be clearer in proof that a general strike inevitably aims to paralyse society in the way that Mr. Mac Donald has condemned ?

So the straits in which the aforetime moderate leaders of Labour find themselves to-day arc tempting them to sidestep the real issue in a very unedifying way. The' fact is that Labour in Britain is not united, and when a crisis of this sort conies its leaders have to cease to be logical and honest in order to keep its ranks close enough to give a semblance of unity Both Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Thomas have repeatedly deplored the lack of unity in the trade union movement in

Britain-. Mr-. Mac Donald has done | this on the floor of the Congress itself. Mr. Thomas at Truro made open reference to "the internal jealousy and sectionalism in the ranks.'' They had "too many unions and too little unity" was his pithy way of expressing the fact. Anyone who declares to-day that the whole trade union movement, let alone the whole body of workers, is enthusiastically engaged in this general strike is shutting his eyes to facts. His wish is father to his thought. All who recall the initiation of the general strike will remember that it was used as a threat to the Government in the course of negotiations, and that those who used it expressed surprise afterwards that they were taken at their word. Evidently they did not intend to launch the strike. They have since declared that the revolt in the Daily Mail office, which started the battle on the larger scale, was without their sanction or knowledge. So the General Council of the Trades Union Congress has not the control over the insurgents that it professes to have ; the war began through lack of discipline in the attacking army, and now the leaders have to make the best of a general engagement they did not order and find it difficult to command. But the pains to which their political coadjutors are put to prove that the attack is made with peashooters and wooden swords reveal them in a light even more unfavourable than that which beats upon the commanders in the field.