NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19717, 17 August 1927, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

MEDIEVAL SOCIALISM. The character of the modern Labour movement has recently been examined in the Nineteenth Century. Sir Henry Slesser, K.C., who was Solicitor-General in the Mac Donald Labour Ministry, contributed an article in which he maintained that the ideals of the movement were a restoration of the social ideals of the medieval Catholic Church, which, he said, came near to realising a rational ideal of society. Every individual was regarded as an end in himself, and yet every individual was cared for, morally and physically, by the organism of which he was a member, whether guild or order. All such organisations fixed and guarded standards of maintenance, efficiency, and conduct, and were unified in the whole body of the Church, which embraced tho whole of the social order. The analogy was developed in the following number of the magazine by Canon Sturdee, who maintains that the movement is restoring, not the best features of tho middle ages, but some of the worst. "The Labour Party, in its pursuit of medieval idealism, is repeating the worst errors of the medieval Church by adopting the very practices which temporarily reduced the whole fabric of society to a state of chaos," he says. "There is scarcely any mistake made by tho medieval Church which the Labour Party is not unconsciously reproducing in another form." Canon Sturdee recalls the fact that the modern State emerging had to make good its authority against two forces—the baronage and the Church, of which the Church, by reason of its efficient organisation. international affiliations and popular appeal, was the more formidable. The wheel is revolving again, and the State is once more fighting for its authority. Instead of the baronage and the Church, it is now the great trade unions, with their increasingly efficient organisations and their international affiliations, which seek to impose their will upon the State. A CHALLENGE TO THE STATE. "As in tho old days tho Church endeavoured to gain its own end by laying tho whole country under an interdict, so trade unions to-day talk of doing the same by calling a general strike. Both are instances of direct action," says Canon Sturdee in analysing the medieval character of the Labour movement. Picketing ho compares with excommunication. "What is known in industrial disputes as intimidation," ho says, "has grown to such proportions that it is in great danger of becoming the Inquisition under another name and form. "In every direction," says Canon Sturdee, "there are striking parallels between tho claims and aims of Labour, as expressed in trades unionism—and the® medieval Church. Its challenge to the authority of the State, its attempt to bo a law. unto itself, its organisation as' an miperiurn in imperio, its efforts to dictate national policy by threats of direct act-ion, its insistence upon compulsory membership, its expectation of unquestioning obedience on the part of its members, its infliction of pains and penalties in cases of non-compliance with its authori tative decisions, and its endeavours to become international or world : wide in its scope, are all cases in point. Tests of conscience, compulsory levies, all have a medieval flavour. The excuse is the same—the benefit of "those coerced. Motives and forces are much tho same in any age. It is only tho scene that shifts —from Hotno to Moscow. It is only the subject that changes—from theology to economics. It is only the agents that vary—from a certain type of ecclesiastic to a peculiar kind of socialist. For the sake of all concerned, let us hope that the real loaders of the Labour movement will realise tho folly of repeating in the twentieth century the mistakes made by many of the leaders of the Church in the sixteenth."