GOVERNMENT HAS GROWN OLD

Chronicle (Levin), 20 August 1947, Page 4

GOVERNMENT HAS GROWN OLD

If the Parliamentary Lahour Party is to he assured of office at the next Geueral Election, it must do more than maintain its present hold on the electorate, states an article in the currept issue of the watersiders' official journal. It will nefed, the article continues, to gain new adherents to secure a majority adequate for effeptive government, hut recent events indipated no great hopes of this. Postwar diffieulties have piled thickly upon those entrusted with leading the workers into the Promised Land, states the. article, which adds: ' ( As a result, the worlcer is a little con fused as he contemplates tlie wide gulf existing between promise and perform ance. A not inconsiderable section, manifesting growing impatienee, has adopted a militant attitude, and 'requests' have taken the form of 'demands, ' with the threat of direct a.ction if grievances are not satisfied. "As far as this organisation is concerned, it might be said that thp, adoption of 'persuasive' tactics had paid dividends to date. Certainly we have attained a good deal following the overtime strike at the turn of the year. "It would be uhsafe, however, to assume that similar taeties will bear fruit in ihe future. The strike weapon is oue which, injudiciously used, can well rebound to the detriment of the workers — the more so with a Labour Government in power. " The article expresses the view that a stage has heen reachpd when recourse to direct action should he cqnfined to defending things already won, rather than achieving amhitions. There were individuals in- the ti'ade union movement who professed' to see no good in the Labour Government, and it had even been suggested that the vvorkers would be better oif today if Labour had not attained power. "Their argument," states the article in reference to these "detraetors," "is that with the Labour Party relegated to the Opposition benches and a Gonservative Government in power, the workers could, per mediuni of the strike weapon, and with the tacit approval' of a Labour Opposition, bludgeon the Government of the day into submission to their demands. Such reaspning is dangerous theorising, and those who expound this view are not friends of the ^Labour movement. The article says the Government, particularly the Cabinet, has gjrown old in office, and the stage has been reached where some memhers '"should give place to the Martih Finlays, the •Qrmoiid Wilsons nnd the Alap Baxters of the Labour movement. ' ' The article acknowledges that it must he difficult for men who have devpted a lifqtime of service to the people to stand aside, hut it was a duty wfiich they ovred to the- Labour movement.