The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 1911. LABOUR LEADERS IN COUNCIL.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1105, 19 April 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 1911. LABOUR LEADERS IN COUNCIL.

In , his famous History of Co-opera-lion, Mr. G. J. Holvoake described trade union councils as, "not leaders of art in industry," but "mere connoisseurs in strikes." To-day ho might have substituted "connoisseurs in mischief," and would have documented his judgment with the reports of Monday's sitting of the Labour Conference in Christchurch. What really requires most emphasis in those debates is not the folly and ignorance of these fluent demagogues so much as the harm they do to the workingmen who contribute their salaries. This harm is twofold. In the first place, it is a great injustice to the average workiugman that he should be so represented,by his leaders, whom the public is ready to believe are merely his mouthpieces, expressing his settled opinions; in the second place these noisy Socialists arc exceedingly likely to cause in ths end direct actual damage of a material kind.to the trade unionists as a body, who, for the most part, are peaceable ■ and moderate men, whose chief fault, or misfortune, is their inability to save themselves from unwise leadership. Of the violent attack made upon Judge'Sm it.is unnecessary to say very much. We should like to know, however, how tho average workingman likes being saddled with the responsibility for saying, through his leaders, that Judge Sim is a corrupt tool of the employers. For that, in effect, was the _ tremendous charge brought against the Judge in the discussion at the Monday sitting of the Conference. It is regrettable that such a grossly improper suggestion should rbe made, and specially regrettable that there is no way, that we can see, whereby the general body of workingmen can express their dissent from an outburst that will only turn public sympathy against them and their unions.

Had the Conference confined its attack to the powers left to the Court, it would at any rate have avoided adding indecency to error. For some years the unions have sought to deprive the Court of all real power save the power to raise wages nnd--sh6ri.cn tha hours of 'work. The attack'.is evidently to be continued, and if the Government is wise it will decide that the time has come to call a halt in its surrenders to the agitation. The demand that the Court shall not retain the right, when a statute over-rides some terms in an award, to restore the balance of justice by revising the corresponding terms is too unprincipled to have any chancs cf success in Parliament. Of the other powers of tho Court that the Socialists object to the power to refuse to make an award is conferred by statute, and the principle that a union illegally striking shall be deprived of the benefits that it contracted to earn by obedience is also embodied in the 1908 amending Act. Mr. E. J. Carey made an illuminating complaint. "No Judge of the Court," he said, "had giver, satisfaction, and on the removal of each Judge they got a worse It did not occur to Me. Carey, but it will be instantly obvious to nearly everyone else, that this is an oblique but powerful condemnation of the attitude of the unionist agitators. When "Judge after Judge ia declared by the Labour leaders to be unsatisfactory, the public will naturally conclude that the trouble is with the Labour leaders. No Judge can be satisfactory to these people without ceasing to bs a fair and honest Judge. No Judge ever will satisfy them. "Arbitration !" exclaimed the agitator. "Call that arbitration? Why, he's given it against us." The fact that each Judge is regarded by the Labour Councils as "worse" than his predecessor merely means, and the public knows it, that Labour leaders have only grown more bold and rapacious. It takes more to satisfy them.

Of even greater importance is the issue raised by the Conference's demand that the Arbitration Act and Trades Union Act "be amended so as to remove the restrictions imposed on trades unions by virtue of the Osboune judgment." The public is fairly familiar by now with the effect of that famous decision, which, by the way, was the decision of the English Court of Appeal, and merely confirmed by the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords. But it is worth while correcting the absurd and misleading speeches of the two Wellington delegates by stating the facts. "It had not been shown," said Me. M'Lahen, "that rules providing for political action by trades unions were contrary to statute law." But that is exactly what was shown by the Osdorne decision. Me. M'Laeen apparently has some sort of idea that there is a law entirely independent of statute law called "common law." Now the fact is that the trades unions, invented for the furthering of the interests of associations of workmen qua workmen, received statutory recognition in order that the unionists might not be swindled by the secretary. The purposes of the union were clearly enough denned, in general terms, and the charter of a.union cannot legally be enlarged without authority. In New Zealand and in Britain no union may use its funds for the assistance of political parties or the furtherance of political theories. The claim that the Osbokke judgment destroyed an existing right was long ago discarded by honest Labour men in Britain, as Slit. M'Laren ought to know. The judgment destroyed no existing right; it merely crushed an existing practice that never was legal, but that nobody had challenged—nobody haying any interest to do so—until it became oppressive. In New Zealand, as in Britain, trades unions hold their statutory privileges on the condition that unionists may belong to any I political party., Lnionism has, in

the eye of tho law, nothing to do with Liberalism or Socialism, with Protection or Free-trade, with beer or water, with religion or atheism. The claim that a union may use its funds for political purposes has been recognised as monstrously unjust and tyrannous, in its operation, by all parties at Home save the Socialist wing of the Labour party. The idea that a workman, because he belongs to a trades union, must assist to finance a political party that he hate 3 or further political ideas that he abominates is unjust on the face of it. It is so unjust that when tho Federal Government last year attempted to enact what our Conference is asking a sledge-hammer article in the democratic Arjc so rallied public opirion against unionist tyranny that the Government had to admit as an offset the equality of unionists with non-unionists under the law.