NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1356, 6 February 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

The strike of tramwaymen has triumphantly established the. success of the Arbitration Act. So at least the Christchurch organ of the defunct "Liberal" party appears to argue, since it is extremely angry because we said thai) the strike rather tended to prove the opposite thing, Our contemporary, indeed, does not attempt a defence of (he Act, but explodes in a serieii of quotations from the II an sard of twenty years ago. It does not attempt to deny the facts that the Act has not preserver! , industrial peace, and that in strike after strike it has been opdnly defied or utterly ignored by the strikers. I Neither rtocs it suggest that it. is

good statesmanship to retain on the Statute lit ink a law which cunnnt lie enforced, and therein , to encourage people lo trait the law in general with com tempt. No; the organ of Canterbury "Liberalism" says "it would Ijo useless to present tin; other side of the question," because we should retort with sonic of our "choice, phrases." We should think that what really warns it off the grass is not so much the fear of our reply as the large ami obvious facts. Ilowover, our contemporary quotes lltnixiirtl to show that, when the original Bill was introduced by Mr.. RkeVes in 1882, some members of the then Opposition spoke of it with more or less approval. This is very interesting, but what has it lo do with its'! We have nothing to do with the opinions held by any politician twenty years ago. And even if anyone thinks today that the experiment which he regarded so hopefully in 1894 has proved a success, the Act is none, the less bad in principle, and we shall say so. This citation of the opinions of twenty years ago comes oddly from | any "Liberal" newspaper or politician. For they all have quite dreadful political pasts, even if they have no future. The most outstanding feature of the late strike was, apart from the issues on which it was fought, the completeness with which the agitators revealed their characters. They unbared a part of their souls, and it was a really unpleasant sight. They made it clear that they have as little respect for freedom of speech in others as, say, ,Sir Joseph "Wai;)). The silly thregj'to prevent us from issuing The Dominion , —a threat thai; nothing could enforce—was the same in character as the policy of the Government that we are glad to have helped to destroy. These misguided men do not realise that in making this threat they were threatening an institution—the freedom of opinion —the safeguarding of which is more important to the workers than to anybody. But the agitator cares little for anyone but himself. Very significant, too, was the abominable language used by some of the speakers at the Basin Reserve on Sunday. In the Post Office Square yesterday Mr. .Sbmple denied our statement that objectionable and offensive language had b':en used, and as ho went on to describe the editorial staff of this paper as "mental prostitutes," it is just possible that Mr. Semple really believed his friends and he had not offended. Vfa shall say this, however, that we excised from our ruport of the Sunday demonstration many statements concerning named individuals which, if he were asked to address them to the persons concerned in a room in the presence of any dozen decent men drawn from all classes, even Mr. Semple would shrink from repeating. Our evening contemporary described the Sunday language of these gentlemen and heroes as "coarse, disgusting, and vicious personalities." If Mil. Semi'r,E thinks that the language referred to was less than disgusting, we are snrb that the workers in the mass will differ from him and his friends. The agitators have shown themselves up very eomnlctely. Yet they arc the leaders of thousands of decent and honourable workmen.

One of the ugliest of recent happenings in connection with Labour disputes is what the cable messages have been describing us "the persecution of Catholics." at Nelson, in Lancashire. One day last week a hundred men and women cotton weavers, being Hotiiati Catholics, were, assailed by a larger body of other workers, and the police had to intervene. Tho Catholics have since been escorted to and from the mills by tho police, and on at least one occasion the police had to charge the Crowd. This trouble is the outcome of the efforts of the Weavers' Union to force all the operatives in the cotton trade to join its ranks. The union at first tried peaceful persuasion, and succeeded iii enrolling thousands of new members. They next sought to complete their task by means of strikes, and the employers, not seeing their way to assist in the process of coercion, retorted with lock-outs. The operatives in the Lancashire factories were .soon losing i>300.000 a week in wages. There is at Nelson a small organisation of some 200 members called the Catholic Weavers' Union. These people, seceded from tho larger body because they could hot agree with its policy of secular education and nationalisation of industries. They were quite prepared t6_ co-operate with the Weavers' Union on questions as to wages and conditions of labour. The big union, however, insisted on treating them as non-unionists, and demanding their dismissal. Of course the persecution of Roman Catholics is pot the object of the Weavers' Union, but it is clearly one of the effects of their recent tactics. They are prepared for the sake of their own ideas of organisation to trample religious liberty under foot. Thosb who hold certain opinions must dissemble or starve. We wish we could regard the executive of the Weavers' Union as a class by themselves, but we ha.ve seen that in this part of the world, and evert in this city, some of those who claim to speak in the name of Labour show very little regard for civil liberty, when it means liberty to differ from them. We are sure that organised workers as a whole are satisfied that it is a good thing to live in a free country, but unfortunately a few of their leaders are inclined to forget it.