LABOUR GROUPS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 298, 10 September 1908, Page 7

LABOUR GROUPS.

SOCIALISM. TRADES UNION CONGRESS. NO AMALGAMATION WITH LABOUR PARTY. (DI TELIGRAru—rRESS ASSOCIATION—CorTItIGIIT.) (Reo. September 10, 0.40 a.m.) London, September 9. The Trades Union Congress, sitting at Nottingham, passed a vote of censure on Mr. John Burns (President of tho Local Government Board), and on Messrs. F. W. Mad-/ dcison (Labour member for Burnley) and Henry Vivian (Labour member for Birkenhead) for opposing the Labour party's Right-to-Work Bill, which was rejected in the House of Commons on March 13 by 265 votes to 116. / A Socialist resolution to the effect that tfce Congress amalgamate with the Labour party and the General Federation of Trade Unions was negatived by an overwhelming majority. It was afterwards resolved that no member of the management committee of the General Federation of Trade Unions, or of the executive committee of the Labour party, be eligible to servo on the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress. TRADE UNIONISM AND SOCIALISM. The Labour party's Right-to-Work Bill, providing for State-provided employment in various "rades, was opposed by Mr. Maddison (who is a trade unionist) as being State Socialism. In this Mr. Maddison was pitted .against Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and the members of the Parliamentary Labour party, the bulk of whom tiro individually Socialists, though the platform of their party does not include Socialism. It would seem that tho Trades Union Congress, while censuring Mr. Maddison for opposing the Right-to-Work Bill, is at the same time adverse to amalgamation with the Parliamentary Labour party. The trade unionist group is not to be merged in the Socialist. The Labour Party's Conference at Hull last vear passed a resolution calling on the Parliamentary Labour party to dcclare for Socialism, but this did not alter the latter party's present non-committal platform.