The Waikato Times With which is incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1918. THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY

Waikato Times, Volume 89, Issue 13851, 31 August 1918, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which is incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1918. THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY

Whatever may be the position of the other political parties iu Britain after the war is over, it appears to be tolerably certain tha/t the Labour Party will be anything but the united body that a good many people had ex. pected. There are divisions iu the Liberal and Unionist parties, but these are of no great importance compared ivith the divisions in the ranks of politically-organised Labour. In vecent news there is a reference to the National Socialist Party, which is opposed to what it called "the strange mixture of pacifism and Bolshevism" that threatens to dominate the Labour Party. This i s only one of several Labour-Socialist organisations. There are four main divisions, which have been described thus:—(l} "Government Labour, (2) the all-c!asses-of-labour movement, which seeks to bring into the fold other than manual workers, (3) the purely Socialist section, which marches under the banner of several leaders and has its own groups, and (4) Mr Havelock Wilson, v.itli his idea of a Lalwur Party which shall lie confined to members of trade unions.'' Until June last the Labour Party adhered to the political truce arranged early in the war, but the truce was formally declared at an end by a t\*o to one majority at a conference of the party on June 26. The reason given by the executive for putting the question to the conference was that some of the local branches, of the ,ia.ty had ignored the truce and the executive bj putting forward candidates to ippose the Coalition's nominees at byelections. Just prior to the conference the eight Labour members of the Ministry issued a manifesto defending themselves against the incessant niping of "anti-National factionnliru." "Our votes on occasions," they said, "have been recorded and published, our speeches dissected and misrepresented, our actions twisted and turned to suit sectional purposes, and the minds of our constituents poison h 1 by insidious propaganda." in the interests of national unity, however, they had remained in office: and also in the interests of Labour, which would need to be a united body in order to influence the rebuilding of the social and industrial fabric The agents of disunion they referred to as "certain persons who have assumed a right to speak for Labour but who have failed to realise the momentous issues involved in the war." That is the real cleavage

in the party—between the innle-iir.ion-ists who as a liody are solidly behind the Government in it.-i prosecution • f the war, and the pacifist wine; of the Socialists who are in favour of the speediest possible arrangement of peace by negotiation. .Mr Henderson, who moved the resolution against the truce, disclaimed anv intention of

sacking to wreck the Government, or any desire to set Labour in opposition to the Government otherwise than as regards freudom to contest by-elections, but the discussion' revealed that the voting would Ik- upon the larger issue, of general policy towards the Government. Mr Clyne.s declared that the real question was this: Did the trade unions and th>i other constituent parts of the party want an opportunity to resist the G ivcrnment in its oppositiou to German aggression? The conference decided that the party did desire to take that course, hut there is every reason to believe that the rank and file, of the Labour Party arc firmiy with the rest of the nation in desiring to win the war and to avoid an inconclusive or unsatisfactory peace. If they were not—if pacifist and Bolshevist ideas dominated the workers—then organised Labour would become, as Mr dynes nut it, a mere sect, severed from the great national purpose, and standing apart from the rest of the nation. The result would be unhappy for the nation as a whole, but it would be disastrous to the hope s of Labour.