DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16834, 28 June 1926, Page 6

DAY BY DAY.

The healthiest feature of the ending of the general

The End of British Strike.

strike in Britain is the admission of some of the union leaders nominally

responsible that their action was not only illegal but dishonest. Otherwise the history of the strike is but an old story re-told. Misled Labour on such occasions goes in like a lion and comes out like a lamb —a lamb whose innocence is so excessive that the mere notion that it can be held in any way responsible for the things it did when it thought it was a lion is sufficient to reduce, it to astonishment. To a very great extent this assumption of irresponsibility is the product of the union of industrialism and politics—it is not found to any great extent, for instance, in the United States, where the Labour organisations keep out of politics. It is a product, 100, of,tho teaching of the revolutionaries who represent to the worker that he is a poor, foolish, witless creature, held in bonds of slavery by superlatively cunning masters, who use Church, Law, Army, Navy and State as means of riveting the shackles more firmly on the workers' wrists. "You have nothing to lose but your chains," cries the Red leader, and the workers, believing him, go forth to lose two or three weeks' wages, perhaps a month or so of liberty and years of seniority in service. They are then told that these sacrifices and tribulations are merely stepping-stones upon the road to the Anarchical Arcadia or the Cooperative Commonwealth; that the worker has, after all, something more than chains lo lose, is thus neatly side-tracked. The worker is now brought face to face with a great fact, lie finds be is responsible for what bis leaders do because he is responsible for the choice of leaders; ami for the first time he has becu told, by themselves, that leaders are not infallible. On this occasion they have confessed that they erred, and wrongfully counselled the breaking of contracts that ought to have been faithfully observed. The worker has been told by the erring leaders themselves that he must take' the consequence of following them, and be thankful those consequences are no worse. He has even been invited (in the case of J. 11. Thomas and the railway companies) to admit the magnanimity of the other side in not visiling the sins of the leaders upon the followers in a much more unpleasant manner. The lesson i:j one which, if it slicks, may do more for the workers of Britain than all the dole and subsidies with which politicians have cajoled them. II may bring organised Labour lo recover ils conscience; and nothing much can go wrong if it does that.—Australian paper.