The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 1914. LABOUR AND THE TRANSVAAL.

Timaru Herald, Volume C, Issue 15304, 25 March 1914, Page 6

The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 1914. LABOUR AND THE TRANSVAAL.

The South. African Government is probably regretting by this time that it deported Labour leaders without trial. The action was illegal, it was miBritish, and Mr Sniuts, in ais defence of it when the Indemnity Bill was before the House, entirely failed to show that it was necessaiy. It was one thing to use martial law to quell aji insurrection which threatened direst injury to the State, and quite another thing to deny to leaders of the insurrection, after it hsjd been quelled, the right of being heard in their own defence before punishment was meted out to them, which every criminal receives. The action was not only bad for reasons we have state!, but it was foolish and shortsighted from the Government's own point of view. It was bound to create sympathy for the revolutionaries which they would never otherwise have received. It was bound to provoke vengeance against the Government. They have sown "the wind, and thougii they might not reap the whirlwind it was certain that their reaping would not please them. 'Already the consequences of this rash act have become apparent. The elections for the Transvaal Provincial X'ouncil have Given a majority of seats to Labour,

whose candidates hove been elected in most cases by overwhelniI iug majorities. Most people will distrust the view put forward In a Capetown message that these Labour victories have been caus-.-d by "the rapid growth of the Syndicalist propaganda." Syndicalism is too hopeless as a weapon and too obviously the enemy of public welfare to be attractive in any country except to a desperate minority. The people i.f South Africa. Boer and British, expressed their view of syndicalism when they rushed to the assistance of the Government to put down the strike. It is natural to suppose that in returning a majority of Labour members to the Transvaal Provincial Council they have now expressed their opinion of J he tyranny of the Government, n deporting even syndicalists without trial. And that is the conclusion of the "Rand Daily Mail," a journal on the spot, which says that "the public has unniistakeably expressed ."n opinion on the banishments without trial and the repressive policy foreshadowed in the Peace Preservation Bill." The Labour ascendancy may be only temporary, as another Rand newspaper be lieves, but its significance has only one natural interpretation. It is not difficult to find a of goodness in this retribution which has fallen on the Government. It is better that Labour in the Transvaal, or in any country, should employ its energies politically than in strikes. The Labour members who are nowpredominant in the Transvaal Council may do some good Jor Labour, which is under serious disabilities in South Africa. If they do no good for anybody their ascendency will not last long. In any case it is well that the Union Government should see that power cannot, with impunity, be exercised despotically and against the law, even in South Africa. Neither the British Government, nor Lord Gladstone, nor the Labour parties of other British States, all of which have, been appealed to foolishly to "n----terfere as champions of the deported men, could teach that lesson half so well as the people of South Africa themselves. If they had interfered in the affairs of a self-governing dominion the South Africans would have been less inclinedto rebuke the Government which they themselves have chosen, than to uphold it against meddling outsiders. The Transvaal elections give cause for • satisfaction on another ground. They are the answer to an aspersion (not meant as such) which has been made frequently against South Africa. It ' has been urged that British ideas of justice and constitutional procedure do not hold the same sway I in that country as they do in other dominions of the Crown. I Unscrupulous and violent methods, it has been said, are natural in a country that consists of Boers as well as British, that has had to guard itself against a constant native menace, and "ias learned the short sharp shifts if war. The Boers and British 1 the Transvaal have shown that they can recognise injustice iv 1 rebuke it, constitutionally, as one people, as naturally as they conld combine to support the Government when it stood as their protector in a common peril.