Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 44 Years.] SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 1919. INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 45, Issue 13780, 8 March 1919, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established 44 Years.] SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 1919. INDUSTRIAL UNREST.

Tho people of Great Britain have not had long to wait for a verification of the warning that, however difficult they might find the problems of the war, the problems of peace would be ten times harder. Peace has not been signed before the whole industrial system of the country has become disorganised. Ministers, while still engaged in most delicate negotiations, have been summoned

home to the task of restoring the country to order, its factories and mines to their task of production, its railways to the work of transport. If the questions now at issue do not involve human life they certainly involve the safety of the United Kingdom and its future system of government. If the ambitions of a few were to prevail, England would proceed through violence to a form of industrial and political government which has proved disastrous wherever it has been attempted. If, for the sake of peace, the demands of a majority of the strikers were conceded, England would cease to be a manufacturing nation, and a great part of her artisan population would have lost their employment. The main political issues have been stated by the Prime Minister and (the trade union leaders. The nation is now threatened with duress. The strikers insist on an unconditional surrender to their demands not because of their justice, but because the control of mines and of railways places the rest of the community at their mercy. They refuse the means provided by Parliament for a settlement, and will not negotiate with the Executive. They insist on a capitulation to demands which would be fatal to the continuance of other industries. The tactics of the strikers involve the existence of the practice of bargaining between the Government or a private employer on the ono hand, and the union loaders on the other. The practice was recognised after severe struggles, and it was regarded as tho surest protection for the individual employee against the rich employer. To-day, however, the authority of the union leaders is disregarded. Power has fallen into the hands of minor officials who believe neither in political agitation nor in collectivism, but only in direct or indirect action by strikers against the community. It is clear that the conflict has been brought about at the time partly by temporary causes. Workmen were bitterly disappointed by tho results of tho elections. They based their hopes on the success of certain new candidates who were defeated, and they have no faith in the present members, who have made promises and broken them before. MiThomas urges his friends to give tlie new Parliament time, and promises to join them in revolt if it fails to help them. But the strikers are not disposed to wait. They have become used to \ immediate concessions during the war, and they think that they can obtain others while they have vital utilities in their hands. The experience of the war has also told against the authority of the union leaders. They did their utmost for their respective unions, but they were always on the side of the country. They urged men to go back so that the war might bo carried on, and they have lost influence in comparison with those other leaders who would promise anything. Apart from this cawe of weakness a divergence of principle has developed between the strike leaders and the better known Labour representatives in and out of Parliament.

The Labour manifesto showed that progress was expected through a greater extension of the State control over industries. These strike leaders would not welcome such control. They look for a revolution which will place the government of each industry in the hands of its own workmen. The revolution may be obtained by violence or by first ruining one industry after another. In either case it will require the leadership of other men than Mr Henderson, Mr Adamson and Mr Clynes. It must bo in the hands of leaders' who do not regard the State as a whole, but who see it divided into classes of which they owe a duty to one only.