STRAIGHT AHEAD

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8261, 25 October 1912, Page 4

STRAIGHT AHEAD

NOTHING SERIOUS

A dispute has arisen in connection with the gaoling of the Waihi strikers in tho Wellington Trades and Labor Council. The District Trades Council has been for some months amending its rules with a view to its reorganisation as a District Labor Council and then to become affiliated with the United Labor Party.

Had it been affiliated with the United Labor Party industrial disputes would have belonged to the federations of tho trades involved in the disputes, not to district councils. If the United Labor Party had been completely organised the Waihi dispute could not have arisen in the first place. If it had arisen the various trades would have acted through their national federations, not through local bodies.

Tho withdrawal of the seamen from tho Trades Council is to bo regretted. They are invited, however, to take out a charter os a local body in the United Labor Party, to send a delegate to tho Wellington main branch executive and to immediately co-operate in the educational and organisation campaign of the United Labor Party. An invitation to that effect is going to all local bodies.

Mr Young states at the withdrawal of his organ) '.ion from the Trades Council does i mean support for the Federation c abor. Neither should it mean a wi -'awal of sup. port, or a refusal of " pport, to the United Labor Party. These columns have given frequent utterance to emphatic protest to the

action of the miners in. declaring the strike under the circumstances, to tho Government in sending policemen not required, to tho policemen making arrests not necessary, to the requiring of bonds not justified, and in the same way to the miners sending themselves voluntarily to gaol, rather that givo personal promises not to strike anybody or to start a row for a period of twelve months.

It is not an easy thing to refuse support for any of these various acts or enter a protest against any one of them without being misunderstood to give approval to some of the rest.

And the protest passed by tho Trades Council, in tho absence of its principay officers, was immediately construed us an endorsement of the very things which Mr Young very properly declares was not at all his intention to endorse. It is particularly fortunate that ho now declares that his withdrawal from tho council must not bo construed to mean friendship for a policy to which ho has heretofore been strenuously opposed.

Tho members of the Trades Council in rescinding the motion were attempting to do and evidently succeeded in doing something to the same effect. Because they refused tho protest against tho gaoling of the miners on their own choice must not be understood to mean that they thereby approve of tho inexcusable blundering of the Massey Government in this industrial dispute.