BOLSHEVISM IN ENGLAND

Otago Witness, Issue 3398, 30 April 1919, Page 55

BOLSHEVISM IN ENGLAND

LABOUR'S WABNING. Mr H. W. Lee, editor of Justice, and a well-known Socialist, has issued a pamphlet entitled "Bolshevism: A Ourse and Danger to the Workers," in which he warns British working men against the dangerous teachings of the Bosheviks. Mr Lee points to the strike ebullitions in Great Britain, "in which (he says) the presence of Russian Bolsheviks is to be noted. . . . This is all in with the Bolshevist plan of 'world revolution' for which roubles are being plentifully furnished, mainly through agents in Sweden. .The prevailing idea is to pull down bourgeois society, no matter what the consequences. . . - But with the destruction of the State in these islands would go the trade unions built up by years of solid labour and sacrifice, the cooperative societies, just now beginning to take a wider outlook on things than mere 'divi.' hunting, and the democratic political institutions of which the people can make far more use than they do when they choose to exercise their intelligence and besti» their energies. . . . The control of a few 'engineering workshops by shop stewards, puffed out with vanity and a 'little brief authority,' will not provide the food necessary to feed the people of those islands. We have, too, an indication of the spirit of liberty with which they are animated in the massed picketing at Glasgow, not against blacklegs and non-unionists, but against fellow trade unionists who refused to aid unauthorised strikes. I have said that these ' down tools' outbursts at\? anti-Socialist. They are anti-Socialist because they are anarchical. They may pull down, but they cannot build up. We do not want further prejudice raised by hooliganism and looting. Nothing for the benefit of the people can possibly come out of what is no v. going on. All it will do will be" to create prejudice against us by attempts to connect us with anarchical violence, to help reaction, and make even the majority of the working class ready to acquiesce in a mild military dictatorship as a lesser evil than Bolshevist tyranny and violence. And there are some British Generals who are popular, and who are not mere militarists 1" Mr Will Thorne, M.P., in a foreword to the pamphlet, says: "The leading men of the Bolshevist movement in this country are out for the overthrow of things as they are by physical force as soon as they feel confident that they have a good number of th? rank and file- of the wage-earners behind them. I want to warn the wageearners —men and womo i of my own class—against being associated with such people, because I know that tbleir tactics cannot remedy the economic and industrial injustices under which the industrial workers are suffering. 'lhey can be rectified by the Social-Democratic education, scientific organisation in the trade union movement, and by using political powers to that end. The methods adopted by the unauthorised shop stewards movement in the different parts of the country must be rigorously suppressed, and properly t appointed shop stewards and works committees in all factories and workshops must be elected instead."