The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1927. RESPONSIBILITY FOR STRIKES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19846, 21 May 1927, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1927. RESPONSIBILITY FOR STRIKES

It is somewhat strange to find a usually level-headed man like Mr J. H. Thomas asserting that no responsibility for strikes rests upon the shoulders of Trade Union leaders. During the debate in the Commons on the Trades Union Bill, he laid the whole blame on the rank and file. The leaders, he declared, never began the strikes. The rank and file started them at their branch meetings and the leaders only obeyed orders in carrying out strikes which the members had decided upon by ballot. It would be rather interesting to know what the rank and file think of this statement. To judge from it, one would imagine that the Trade Union executives were tongue-tied people, mere dummies, no executives at all in fact. The real truth is that the executives are put in that position to act for the men and to lay out a course of action for them. Moreover the men expect them to do so. True, the executives’ decisions are usually submitted to the ballot, but it is noticeable that in nearly all cases the result of a ballot is in accordance with advice previously tendered by an executive. To censure the men, therefore, for accepting advice given is surely a curious shirking of responsibility.

Not only do the leaders advise the men before a strike, but they also do so during the progress of a strike, by encouraging them to hold out or make new demands, and when the end conies, they are usually to be found counselling the men to give in and return to work. Sometimes ballots are taken on these matters, sometimes they are not. Does Mr Thomas want the public to believe that all these points are raised on the men’s initiative, and that the leaders sit still waiting for orders? If that is the role they fill, then they are not leaders at all. Mr Thomas, of course, is talking nonsense, evidently being hard put to it to find some argument against the Trade Union Bill. The opposition of the Labour members to the Bill has, indeed, been very barren of argument, and the tactical mistakes they have made during the debate have been glaring. The trouble with the British Labour leaders is not that they are too silent, but merely that their leadership is bad, as their record of strike defeats shows. Perhaps if they were more silent, they would make fewer mistakes. And if they left the ballots entirely to the men without inflaming them with bad advice first there would possibly be fewer strikes. To try to deny the leaders’ responsibility is bad enough. But to shift it on to the men who only follow their leaders’ advice is worse. It reminds one of Napoleon deserting his army and leaving it to starve and die in Russia. But even Napoleon did not tell his soldiers that it was their fault.