FICTION AND FACT.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14836, 29 November 1913, Page 10

FICTION AND FACT.

Some of that biting denunciation with which Mr Balfour replied to Mr Ure is required to deal with the perfectly shameless orgy of misrepresentation which is being indulged in by the strikers. A delegate from the Wellington Shipwrights' Union, who attended a meeting of the Sydney Labour Council a fortnight or so ago gave a version of the situation in Wellington that fairly takes one's breath away.

Hβ did not see one act of violence in any shape or form. He never saw a man ill-treated or a window brokenThe first thing he knew of violence was that of the epecial constables. There was a great crowd, and all at once a man, one of the troopers, fired a pistol- They galloped forward into the crowd. A boy was shot in the foot, and another in the back. The inspector said his men fired no shots. Shots had been fired, but not by the crowd. If ever there had been an orderly strike, the etrike in Wellington had been an orderly one.

It may be quite literally true that this delegate did not ccc any act of violence on the part of the strikers, but that does not prevent this precious statement being a tissue of misrepresentation. What are the facts about the "orderliness" of this very "orderly" strike P The day after the strike began strikers rushed the steamer Rimutaka, and stopped the discharge of cargo, and a worker was assaulted. The following day (this was some time before the "specials" arrived and before "specials" were even mentioned) a tally clerk was chased, and rescued by the police, and the behaviour of the crowd who chased him may be gauged by the evidence published in the report of the case that arose out of the attack. A .barricade was broken, and a worker on the Nikau was wounded by a blow from a hottle. Next day two men were assaulted. When the mounted "specials" arrived in Wellington ihey were received with road metal, and after their arrival they wore made a target for volleys of stones, iron, and other missiles, while a diabolical device for laming horses has been used. All this must have been perfectly well known to the delegate who went to Sydney, so that in speaking as he did to the, Sydney Labour Council, he was guilty of the most gross misrepresentation. A shorter *word is the only term to apply to the version of the history of tho last few weeks that appears in a recent manifesto of the Red Federation. "First came'the " armed invasion of our cities—but no "surrender of the fighting workers. "Secondly, the brutal assaults, but " still no surrender." Yet that violence occurred before a mounted "special" rode into Wellington is as true and as plain for all men to see, as that Friday comes before Saturday. The same short word applies to that amazing farrago of untruths that Mr Parry, the emissary of the Federation, has just put before the Sydney Labour Council. Here, of course, we know these lies for libs, but in Australia many workers, not knowing the Federatibn and its ways, may accept them as truth. Here is an opportunity for the United Labour Party to do something for the cause of truth and genuine Labour; it should set the facts of the strike before the workers of Australia at once. By its silence it leads the public of Australia to believe that *the Federation speaks for the workers of New Zealand, and we cannot imagine a worse libel on our own country than that.