The Press Tuesday, January 7, 1919. Labour and Progress.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16414, 7 January 1919, Page 6

The Press Tuesday, January 7, 1919. Labour and Progress.

If anything were needed to prove that those who profess to speak in the name of the Canterbury Trades and Labour Council are quite unable to see where the real interests of the working classes lie, and are unfit to be trusted as their leaders, it is to be found in the resolution passed at a meeting of the Council held to consider the question of joining in with the Canterbury Progress League. • The text is as follows: — I "In our opinion the best interests of Labour can be served by our standing aloof from the so-callea Progress League. • In view of the fact that "those responsible for its formation are interested solely in comniercial and landed interests, their definition of progress is not Labour's definition—theirs is financial, ours is human welfare ana human happiness. We also realise that they are a Citizens' Association J who recently gave an illustration of their attitude to Labour's well-being in the manner in which they brought down and carried through the rescinding of tho proportional and preferential system of election which was in operation here at the last municipal election." This resolution merely reflects the stupid and mischievous idea formerly promulgated by the Federation of Labour that employers and wage-earners are natural enemies, and that the happiness of the latter depends upon their carrying on continual warfare against the employers until the present condition of society is destroyed—the creed of the Bolshevists in fact. The resolution goes even further, because it assumes that the interests of Labour are altogether distinct from those sf citizens who desire to see the resources of .this province developed,

and its material rrosperitv advanced. How such progress is opposed to "human welfare and happiness." and on what grounds the Trades and Labour Council claim to possess a monopoly of the real principles on which human welfare and human happiness are based, the resolution does not condescend to explain. Every working man who gives five minutes consideration to the matter knows that if the development of our resources is pushed d'cad, it means increased employment for labour, and that in any increase of material prosperity which is thereby brought about, the working classes are sure to share. The proper business 'if the representatives of organised labour is not to throw cold water on any movement for the development of the •ountry's resources but to help it by every means in their power, and then to take care that in the distribution of the profits of the enterprise, labour \cets its fair share. Perhaps it will be said we are attaching too much importance to a resolution which hears evidence or 'laving boon engineered by a small disgruntled clique, who are angry bei -ause the City Council—after having nude a trial of the system of proporional representation and having found : t utterlv unsuited for the election of i Council of 16 members, whatever 'nay be its merits in other cases—has decided to revert to the system in uso by practically every other municipality within the British Empire. Most people know that the resolutions •lassed at meetings of tho Trades and Labour Council and similar bodies are usually concocted and pushed through by a small body of officials and are far from representing the views of the majority of tho trades unionists on behalf of whom they profess to speak. The dragging of proportional representation into a resolution where it was obviously out of place was unjust as '.ell as silly, because advocates of the system of proportional representation are to be found in the Canterbury Progress League as well as outside of it, and the League had no more to do with the rejection of the system by . the City Council than had the Trades and Labour Council. We regret the passing of the resolution Ave have quoted, not because wo deem it of anv particular importance or because we think it expresses the opinion of any considerable body of workers, but because we are afraid it may give outsiders, including our distinguished visitors from oversea, a very mistaken idea regarding the amount of intelligence and broadmindedness actually possessed by Canterbury workers. As a body they can hold their own for levelheadedness and intelligence with any similar body of men in the world.