THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEPORTATIONS.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14889, 31 January 1914, Page 10

THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEPORTATIONS.

The action of tho South African Government in deporting, without the authority -of law, ten of the revolutionary syndicalists engaged in tho recent strike, is in several respects nothing short of a calamity. These men, it is true, preached sedition and openly incited their followers to resort to criminal violence, with the result that law, life and orderly government were in grave peril, but it cannot be contended that these facts destroyed the right of these men to- be dealt with according to law. It is true that the Government can ask Parliament to rJass an Act of Indemnity which will cover the deportations, but no ex post facto relief can justify-the forcible kidnapping and banishment of untried prisoners. This simple consideration must, of course, havo been weighed by the Government, which cannot but have foreseen also the storm which its startling decision would arouse from end to end of the Empire. Perhaps it has some information in its possession the publication of which wil] harden up the public favour with which its treatment of the strike has been regarded, and with which, according to the cable messages, a great section of public opinion regards even the deportations. Nothing would be more foolish or more unneighbourly than to demand that the South African public should take as cool and detached a. view of tho situation as tho spectator Dominions axe able to take, and no just person will blame very severely the frame of mind which appears in the "Capo Times's" crystallisation of South African opinion. This journal considers the deportations "unjustifiable legally, but " justifiable on the ground of common ''sense and public safety." Nobody outside South Africa is competent to say a word upon the requirements of public safety in the Union at the present time, but the Government will havo to make out an overwhelmingly strong case if it desires to convince the world that it could not have waited until it had provided itself with the legal weapons necessary to deal effectively with these dangerous men. One of the evil results of the Government's action haa already shown itself in the speech of Mr Ramsay Macdonald. We do not refer to his pretence that tho South African strike leaders never went beyond upholding "the right to strike and the right to " picket," for he knows, as everyone knows, that these men advocated and promoted desperate crimes against life and law and order. We refer to his suggestion that if there is no Imperial authority to coerce and restrain a colonial' Government's administration' of colonial affairs, it is time such authority were established. The deportation of the men, as the Botha Government ought to have known, was certain to encourage mischievous talk of this kind. It will also make easy the misrepresentation of the facts of the strike, and it threatens, we are told, the postponement of the Government's proposed legislation dealing with industrial . disputes and trade unions. The strike, it is said, was in a sense a protest against these Bills, although it is difficult to find in the Bills any justification for a violent war against the Government and the community. The Trade Unions Bill, of which full summaries are now available, is very much on the lines of the law governing trade unions and industrial unions in this country, although it contains provisions for the concellation of registration in the event of breaches of the Industrial Disputes Prevention Bill, and provisions also against intimidation. The Industrial Disputes Prevention Bill is simply an adaptation of the principle of the Canadian law, like the Act passed here last session, and to New Zealand eyes it will appear to be a promising attempt to minimise the profitless quarrels which sensible unionists everywhere are coming to regard as not less injurious to the workers' true interests than to the community.