NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1431, 4 May 1912, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY

There is perhaps no subject upon which a clear statement by Mr. Thomas Mackenzie \vo\ild be so interesting as the programme of Sip. Joseph Ward. The public has perhaps not yet become used to the fact that the member for Awarua is theoretically a subject of Mr. Mackenzie's in the political sense. He was appointed by the Mackenzie Ministry—nominally by the Mackenzie Ministry, but of course really by himself—the representative of this country on the Imperial Commission on Trade. He is having a holiday in Australia, but before ho departed he indicated,_ in the manner of one who is still in control, that his membership of the Commission would not interfere in the least with his membership of the House of Representatives. We were informed yesterday by a cable message from London that the Commission's first meeting in London has been postponed until the end of Juno in order that our representative may be prosent. No doubt Mr. Mackenzie is still a dependent of the member for Awarua, but the interest of New Zealand in the Commission justifies the request that the Prime Minister should tellus something about our representative's movements. It is not a question ; of curiosity: the country really_ wants to know what the position actually is. If the member for Awarua, as the case would seem to be, _is going ahead with his commissionership, when does he intend to permit the Piume Minister to allow the public to know the situation in respect of tlio Awarua seat?

The vigorous statement upon the. political situation made by Mn. Lang, IM.P., to our Auckland' correspondent covers the ground very fully. Our own opinion is that it is quite unnecessary for anybody to help the, Mackenzie Ministry to demonstrate tho absurdity of the Jlinistry's position. Mr. Lako laid nome stress upon the generally overlooked fact, that. Mn." Maww.ik iij put a farmer. Jiic tdJt iw c«,-

tiiinly beeii so much of bullocks that must people probably imagine the Prime Minister to have spent years in tilling the soil. Of course he is not a fanner. He is lis little of a farmtfr as Mil-. Han ait or Mn. JjAu'reKsun or Mil. Jlussell, none of whom would feel happy in the presence of a plough and (he .absence of a mob. But; there is such a thing as an instinctive sympathy with agriculture, and that. Mil. Mackenzie possesses this instinct is extremely likely, although, its Mil. Lang points out,'one would hardly suppose so from | his preference for the avowed enemies ot the fundamental farmer policy—the policy of the freehold. Mr.. Mackenzie has no right to complain that his references to Mn. Ma'ssev as a "bungler" have led Mr. Lang to contrast the successes of the Reform party under Mr. Massey's leadership with the, absurd position of Mr. Mackenzie, the leader of a party that he joined only to find it broken in two and unpossessed, even' in the mass, of the nation's confidence. But, as we have said, there is really no occasion to interfere with the Ministers in their career of damning all of that "Liberalism" which they arc supposed to represent. We may in time discover what they stand for. At present nobody knows.

The news that the British Government has definitely decided to introduce legislation to reverse the Osborne judgment is evidence of a good deal of anxiety in Liberal circles' to conciliate the Labourites in Parliament. It will be remembered that the Osborne judgment denied the. right of trade unions to devote their funds to the maintenance of political parties. Nobody of_ any authority has questioned the justice of this decision, which merely protected th,e political conscience of the individual trade unionist against the tyranny of labour agitators. Following upon'the Trade Disputes Act of 1906. which made the coal strike possible by conferring upon trade unions a new and special immunity, which they had not enjoyed _ heretofore, from financial responsibility for tortious acts, the statutory erasion of the principle of justice contained in the Osborne judgment will give to the Socialistic wing of the British Labour party a dangerous dominance of industry; The Government has obviously yielded to Labour pressure for political reasons, just as it yielded to Labour pressure when it passed the Trades Disputes Act. iThe effect of this Act is well summed up by Me. Arthur Cohen, K.C., who was a member of the Royal Commission whose renort against the reversal of the Taft Vale decision was ignored by the Government. In a letter to The Times he says:— A contract between workmen and their employers is negotiated and sanctioned by the officials of a trade union, and yet tho'trade union, which exercises almost an unlimited power of influencing the workmen, can with complete immunity ( order or procure them to break the contract, although made under its directions and with its sanction. Again, a trade union may, through its authorised officials, order or procure any person to- commit a tort causing any amount of injury, and the injured person, is precluded from recovering any compensation whatever from the funds of the trade union. _ These provisions thus give to trade unions and their agents privileges and immunities of a nicst abnormal character such as have never been accorded to any other association, and it is utterly impossiblo to discover any principles of justice, equity or public policy by which those provisions can ba justified.

Professor Geldart, a staunch friend of the Radicals in social-legal and politico-legal controversies found himself unable to deny that Mr,. Cohen is right in his indictment of the injustice of the Act. It is therefore exceedingly likely that there will be widespread discontent amongst fair-minded Liberals at the Government's latest concession to trade union tyranny.