ONE MORE BLIND ALLEY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18280, 24 June 1921, Page 4

ONE MORE BLIND ALLEY.

If the young and ambitious leader of the British miners speaks by the book, industrial history is about to repeat itself in the Old Land. Mr Hodges has discovered the fact that the trade unions will not be forced willy-nilly into any or every wild-cat adventure which Labour leaders promote. A cable message has credited him with saying that the trade union movement was a mere grouping, for the most part, of close corporations with only their own particular interests at heart. If he would but get rid of the obsession of his own particular interests he would observe that the rank and file at times possess a vision clearer than that of the ambitious leader who dreams of autocracy. If the day unhappily comes when trade unionists obey the call of a group of men and cease work in the vain endeavour to coerce the community, the first step towards anarchy will have been taken. The minors’ prospects were bad on : the fatal day when their leaders called on them to strike, but many intelligent men failed to see how a strike, with its consequent waste and suffering, could mend matters for them. Events have proved that the strike has done the miners’ cause no good service, while it has inflicted incalculable injury on the nation and its people. The leaders, having once more led the workers into a blind alley, seek to shift the responsibility from their own shoulders on to the shoulders of those who refused to be willing partners in the extension of tho area of suffering. Mr Hodges hoped “they would not rest content until they achieved politically what they had failed to achieve industrially.” It is a sorry ending to an ignoble effort. It will be remembered, however, that Mr Hodges previously repudiated the suggestion that the strike, had any political significance. It would now appear that the wages question was not the real issue, but that nationalisation of the coal mines, which is a political issue, was the dominating idea behind the strike. Otherwise it would be absurd to suggest that the industrial failure could be retrieved by political action. The amazing inconstancy of Labour’s aim remains a puzzle to the onlooker. At one period a concentrated effort is made in the political arena, but before the fruits of the effort can be gathered the will-o’-the-wisp of direct action lures the leaders to the destruction of political prospects. “All things by turns and nothing long” aptly describes the mercurial temperament of many Labour leaders. Now apparently when the war chests have been emptied the leaders propose to direct their attention to politics, but an empty war chest and the haunting memory of the latest blind alley experience cannot be calculated to inspire the industrial classes with confidence in the outcome of the new design. Those who would aspire to govern others must first learn to govern them-

selves, and until Labour leaders generally show more regard for the community and a higher regard for constitutional action they must not be surprised if they are generally mistrusted.