“NATIONALISATION.”

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 46, Issue 14128, 28 May 1920, Page 2

“NATIONALISATION.”

CRY OF SELFISH SECTION. Writing in the }‘ ‘ Nineteenth ;Century ’ ’ on ‘ ‘ Nationaualisation,’ ’ Mr <l. A. R. Marriott, M.P., points out that what is now called by that name is really an attempt at the ownership of industries by sections of workers for their own benefit —not for the benefit of the nation as a whole. There 'has been much talk by union agitators in England and in Australia as to the nationalisation of the mines. Yet, sa,ys Mr Marriott, it is not “the mines for the nation” but the mines for the miners, that is the ultimate objective of those from whom, the agitation iobtains its driving power. It is not State Socialism, but syndicalism, . at which they are aiming. Nationalisation in the true sense of the term would be the last thing that the miners or other craftsmen would accept. The Labour “intellectuals” know perfectly well what they are after. The machinery of the State will be used to “eliminate” the private capitalist and the private employer; but from the first the miners are to be associated with the State in management by a species of “joint control.” That, however, is merely the transitional stage; the ultimate objective is syndicalism — ownership and management to be vested in the miners themselves.

The. programme issued in 1912 by the Miners’ Unofficial Reform Committee, known as “Tie Miners’ Next Step,” sets out the whole course which the agitation was to follow, and which, to a largo extent it has followed —the minimum wage, the limitation of hours, the denunciation of conciliation boards, wages agreements, etc, the adoption of a policy of open hostility between employer and employed, the use of the irritation strike and of the limitation of output, the elimination of the employer, and the ultimate objective “an organisation that will ultimately take over the mining industry and carry it on in the interest” —not of the nation, but “of the workers.”