MR THOMAS SPEAKS OUT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3782, 7 September 1926, Page 31

MR THOMAS SPEAKS OUT.

WAR ON OUR OWN PEOPLE. THE LESSON OF THE GENERAL STRIKE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, July 15. Mr J. H. Thomas, the secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, broke his long silence on the occasion of a meeting preliminary to the railwaymen’s annual conference. “What is the lesson of past events?” he said. “ The general strike, by the very nature of things, must fail. It is doomed to failure from the moment it is declared, because it is a brutal attempt to punish the innocent as well as the guilty, and because the more successful the general strike is the more you impoverish vour own people and starve them ultimately into a settlement. It must also fail because it is a war on our own people, and it is not common sense. If the people declare a strike because they are denied the right of democratic government, then that would be a strike for freedom. But what answer is there to people who inflict loss on the community merely because they haven’t the courage or common sense to exercise their rights at the ballot box? “Everything that has happened is strictly in accordance with what I have said would happen. Resolutions for my dismissal are brought forward annually, the charge being that I have been opposed to any strike in particular and a general strike above everything. On the Friday night, when we were battling for peace, as we battled up to the last moment, everything X have said to-day is recorded in the shorthand notes of whot I told the Prime Minister, and I said the same to my own executive. “ Mr Cook has said I was grovelling for peace. That is perfectly true. I was grovelling for peace, because I knew what war meant. I wanted peace, and I am not ashamed of having grovelled for it. I want to put this to the country. Those who believe that the general strike was a carefully preconceived plan from Russia, that Russian gold and Russian methods, and Russian influence were at work, are not only foolish people, but they would be serving their country better if they were to remain quiet. “In the calling of the general strike there was not a man or woman of the General Council of the Trade Union Congress who had any other idea than that he or she was taking a part in a purely industrial issue, and nothing else.” At the Railway Conference, Mr Thomas made a strong appeal to the railway companies not to let the men remain with a feeling week by week, month by month, year by year, that they were only waiting to get their own back. He said that at the end of the general strike the union leaders thought it was no good quibbling or pretending that their action as a union had not been .an illegal one. “We went to the companies,” he continued, “ and said * a wrong has been done, and we have come to do the honourable thing.' The companies have now got into the agreement something they have never had before, and that is a pledge that there would be no railway strike in future before it was discussed with them. Now, let the railway companies do the big thing in return, without any pin-pricking and with no petty officialism running rampant.”