HARD-HEADED NEW ZEALANDERS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8257, 21 October 1912, Page 4

HARD-HEADED NEW ZEALANDERS

REPORTING PROGRESS

The “Maori! and Worker” complains because there is no general utilising among tho workers on account ol tfio Waihi strikers having been sent to traol in tieiauit oi bonds to keep tho peace, and says 1 •Concerted campaigning should have spread as the whirlwind, U very trades union should have been up in arms. Tho Labor movement of every centre ought to have quickened with tho white heat of organised protest.”

Concerning this there are two things which must be said very plainly. The first is concerning the interference of the Government, tho sending of police which were not needed, the arrest of miners not for any offence committed but in anticipation of possible offences. No one at all familiar with the facts would for a moment defend any of these, neither would they defend the effort on tho part of the workers to divert attention from the points in dispute to a demand for a gaol delivery, not because tho men had been sentenced for any offence, but had simply been held in default of giving bonds and only until such bouds should be forth coming. To demand that in order, to justify tactics of that sort a general strike should bo called, and all the hazards, misfortunes, hunger and disorder necessarily following such an act should be undertaken, smacks very largely of the fanaticism and extraordinary -unreason which has characterised this dipnto from the beginning.

Again, the trades unions in all the centres were ordered to co-operate to furnish money, to give support in an industrial dispute, tho avowed purpose of which was to destroy arbitration. And this demand was made by those who had already made in vain tho demand that these same unions should themselves abandon their own standing in tho Arbitration Court, and_ because these unions, believing in arbitration, refuse to join in supporting a strike, made with tho avowed object of destroying arbitration, these unionists, grown old in the service of trades unionism, have been denounced throughout Now Zealand, and by special emissaries sent throughout Australasia the campaign of slander has been extended. And then in the face of tbia the men who are being denounced as “scabs” and “renegades” are asked to develop on notice “a white heat indignation” because the men who are so denouncing them have voluntarily sent themselves to gaol.

The “Maoriland Worker” wants “the concerted campaigning to spread os a whirlwind.” If there was unity in the Labor movement, the unity which nine-tenths of the trades unionists have been asking for, and the very men most hated by the federation have been asking for, no concerted campaigning would Have bean necessary to secure unity of action in the face of any rational battle.

If the Waihi controversy had been discussed and a policy agreed upon by the authority of the ballot in which all the miners of New Zealand had had opportunity to vote, there would have been no strike at Waihi. If other organisations, whose cooperation was desired, had been asked to consider the situation and to declare their position before any strike was declared, and their approval had been secured, and a strike had become inevitable, it would not have been tho controversy of a handful of the avowed enemies of arbitration.

The time for concerted campaigning is before a strike is undertaken. The time to ask for tho endorsement of a strike policy is before the tools are thrown down. The time to ask for co-operation is when those who are asked to co-operate may co-operate in determining the lines of tho warfare as well os afterwards to co-operato in carrying on the war.

This most painful situation at Waihi, the disastrous defeat of the federation, the withdrawn! from any further connection with that body, and the refusal, of great bodies of workers only recently contemplating an alliance with the federation, is not a reflection on the tramwaymen of Auckland nor on any other body taking like action. The workers of New Zealand are certainly coming to realise that the first essential in the Labor movement is solidarity, but that solidarity cannot be secured by a campaign of personal abuse for the purpose of compelling self-respecting working people to pledge allegiance in advance to do anything they may be told to do by an utterly untrustworthy and thoroughly discredited federation executive.

Complete solidarity is only possible where there is complete democracy. Tho federation cannot continue to demand union and to withhold representation in its own counsels from those unions which seek to co-operate with it. It cannot be permitted to continue its cry for solidarity and at the same time push its campaign for disruption and dissension.

Tho votes by which tho few organisations which wore misled into declaring an alliance with the Federation of Labor are now retiring from that body,

are at the same time paralleled by imothor line of votes taken by large bodies of organised workers declaring their affiliation with tho United Labor Party. The Labor movement which is to command tho confidence and secure tho cooperation of all tho organised workers In New Zealand, including the miners along with the rest must bo built on democratic lines, must provide for selfgovernment, must have a definite political programme, must relate itself to national and municipal politics, must bo prepared to deal effectively with the palliatives which tho New Zealand Federation of Labor deals with, but it must also bo prepared to deal with those larger measures which affect tho industrial and economic welfare of all tho people of New Zealand.

It can deal with these questions only by action in politics, and the politics of New Zealand need nothing else so much as rational organisation.

There is no possible way by which tho people of Now Zealand can bo organised, effectively organised, for political activity, so just, so rational, so demoi cratic as to organise each useful person through the organisation of the occupation in which that person gives expression to his usefulness to the community. When all the occupations of New Zealand are rationally organised, when they are centrally related to each other in a national body, then matters which pertain to each occupation by it self can bo handled by those concerned in tho occupation. If co-operation is necessary, the co-operation of those in other organisations can be secured through tho organisations concerned, but those most active, most responsible, most capable in all the occupations under this arrangement, will not only have mastery over the organised activities regarding those things which are purely industrial, b.ut through political activities will have the mastery of Parliament. Then two things at least will become impossible in New Zealand—tho farce at Waiiii, and the farce just now being enacted in tho Parliament Buildings at Wellington. The usual Parliamentary utterance and tho soap-box oratory of tho federation apostle have this solo and only difference, that tho Parliamentary sample has the appearance of being more comfortable, better fed, and betted dressed, but at bottom it is the same incapable and unworthy grovelling with personalities and avoidance of fixed purpose or rational principle.

The Labor movement in New Zealand is not fanatical or unworthy. All that is needed is an organisation through which the high purpose and sound judgment of the useful members of the community can find effective expression.

The people of New Zealand are not bigoted, narrow-minded, party blind nor incapable of high They are among the most democratic and progressive of all the people of tho earth. All .that is needed is such a political organisation as will give the mastery to the best there is in the life of New Zealand. Tho United Labor Party is trying to make itself such an organisation.