LABOURS EXECUTIVE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7929, 12 October 1911, Page 5

LABOURS EXECUTIVE

COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL FEDERATION •

Replying-to a letter recently addressed io in in Mr Edward Tregear writes as folio v.'s to the secretary ot the New Zealand Labour party (Mr T. \V. Kay): Sir, —1 accept with pleasure your notification. that 1 have been appointed to represent the Labour party on Uomimon Executive Council of f ‘Tho National federation of Aliiliated Unions.” I do so because 1 am firmly convinced that a man who loves his country cannot do better work at the present moment than spend his whole strength in the effort to unite the separate divisions of Labour into one compact and intelligent eocial organism. There can be no hope higher than the aspiration to avert national calamity and to ensure national security. The manner in which Labour is guided and controlled at the present crisis by those in power both in and out of Parliament will bo the test between the politician and the statesman. Labour must be fully and wholly organised, not only for tne sake of its own well-being, but because it will otherwise become a danger to the whole community. Many among us, despairing of any full measure of justice being given to the proletariat by means of dilatory legislative action, and stung to desperation by the innumerable hardships which poverty entails, are crying out for '‘the Universal Stiike. - " A few weeks ago w© had to recognise- what the strike of a small number of organised unions brought about in England. In three or four days a state of commercial paralysis ensued: and greater trouble was only averted by the concession to the workers of almost everything they had asked for. Had the cessation, of work extended to all trades and occupations the whole social structure would have collapsed. This strike was successful because the men were industrially organised. The danger lay in the fact that they were only industrially and not also politically organised, eo that they were practically unprepared to avert the catastrophe which loomed close at hand. That is to say, the workers know how to stop the machine, but not how to set the whole complex business of industrial and national life going again under new and improved direction. It is easy to stop the progress of a steamship by doing something to smash up the engines, but it is difficult to start ahead again after the machinery has been wrecked. If the universal strike should stop the engines of the Ship of State, it should be don© by the skilful trained hand of Labour's own engineer, and then the only stoppage should bo to make the engines work bettor.

Must it be necessary to resort to the ■universal ©trite? Let ns first make sure that less violent means have utterly failed. W© must organise for both political and industrial work, and then wo can use either method. In New South Wales, in Western Australia, and in the Federal Government of the • Commonwealth, we see organised Labour in political command, able through its own loaders to carry on the direction of social and national affairs at least as ahly as its opponents. If Labour, when united, cannot achieve this in New Zealand, it can at least get ready by organisation to evolve order out of trie chaos that will ensue when Labour turns to bay and moves on to inevitable victory. Therefore, in the hone that my remaining years may be made useful in trying to impress on Labour its immense coming responsibilities, and the necessity for that unity which alone can enforce sane control and perfect self-government, 1 accept this position, with gratitude to the I/a hour party for showing its confidence in me by appointing me to the position. (Signed}—Edward Tregear.