AGAINST DICTATORSHIP

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18258, 29 November 1933, Page 4

AGAINST DICTATORSHIP

BRITISH UNIONISTS CONGRESS FIRMLY * OPPOSED LONDON, Oct. 14. The reality of the threat to democracy, now that it is being assailed by Fascists on one side and by forces looking to a dictatorship of the Left on the other, bulked largely in the debates at the recent annual meeting of the Trade Union Congress at Brighton. Mr. J. Rowan, of the electrical trades, indeed, said that the British trade unions were wedged between their Fascist members on the onev extreme, and the Communists on the other, both growing stronger, and unless they put out these extremists at both ends' the tragedy of Germany might be repeated. The Trade Union Congress is a with 3,500,000 members representing British organised labor generally.. .It nominates and pays part of the election expenses of a majority of _ the Labor Party in the British House of Commons. It thus exercises dominating influences in the politics of the Left. It is regarded as not without significance therefore that one of the chief resolutions sponsored by its executive and passed by an overwhelming majority at Brighton, declared definitely against “all forms of dictatorship,” this being understood to mean dictatorships of the Left as well as those, of the Right. The situation in which the resolution was passed is rendered piquant by tho fact that influential members of the orthdox Labor Party, headed by Sir Stafford Cripps, Sir Charles Trevelyaq, Mr. Edward F. Wise and Mr. .'George D. H. Cole, have heen advocating procedure which would amount to absolutism not far different in its methods from the dictatorships preached by Fascists and Communists, each for their respective ends.