The Dominion. TUESDAY, JULY 15, 1919. "DIRECT ACTION"

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 249, 15 July 1919, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, JULY 15, 1919. "DIRECT ACTION"

1 A MAIL just received from Australia brings pitiful stories of the hardships and sufferings inflicted on the poor sections of the population by the Labour-oligarchy which is responsible for the maritime strike. In Melbourne alone there arc thousands of cases of real distress, and in a country which but for industrial strife would 1 make reasonable comfort and prosperity available to every member of its population, women and children are dependent on public charity for the bare necessaries of life. The .total scope throughout tile Commonwealth of the enforced unemployment and destitution due to the "direct action" of the Australian seamen must he appalling] and it is extending week by week. A parallel to the sufferings that are now being inflicted upon an_cverinereasing host of innocent victims in Australia, and more especially upon women and children, must be sought in some of the darker pages of the history of the war. To the militant Labour despotism which for the time being dominates the industrial situation in Australia, however, these sufferings represent simply a means to an end. Its members have deliberately ■ set themselves to infli,ct tho worst possible hardships upon a numerous section of the wage-earning population 1 as one means of enabling a favoured section of organised Labour to exploit the rest _ of the population to the top of its bent. The ihcn who have instituted this policy are not more remarkable for callous brutality than for cynical effrontery. Finding that in spite of the calamities tho strike has occasioned the Government and people of the Commonwealth arc in no way inclined to submit to their .demands, the extremists have now declared in favour of a general strike, and, as reports stand, are doing their utmost to extend the upheaval as widely as possible. Obviously it is not to the seventy thousand workers already driven into-the ranksi of the unemployed by the action of the seamen that tho general strike appeal is addressed. Nor is there any question of the appeal, being general except in name. The whole concern of the exponents of "direct action" is .to doniinate and control limited see-, tions of organised Labour which are fortunately placed in relation to the mass of the wage-earning population. It was reported a clay or two ago that the effort of tho general strike advocates in Australia will be to induce coal-mincrs and railway and other transport workers to make common cause with the seamen. No doubt this is their actual working programme, and if they succced in carrying it out tho Commonwealth will be subjected to nil even more trying ordeal than it is now enduring. In any case_ it is self-evident that the part assigned to _ the mass of Australian workers is that of victims and not of participants. , The real nature of "direct action" and the results it is bound to produce have never been better exemplified than in the existing state of affairs in Australia. In order that a thousand seamen, who refuse to submit their claims to the Arbitration Court, may assert the right to impose what tonus they like upon the community, something over seventy thousand workers, who have neither been considered nor consulted, arc cast out of employment. Such results arc the' inevitable outcome of "direct action." It is not more evident that "direct action" is'an appeal to brute force than that it implies brute force exercised by a, minority. It is possible in existing circumstances for sections of the population to organise with predatory

aims against 1 the _ rest of tho community, and it is hero and here alone that scone for "direct action" appears. It is a poor consolation for the wrongs indicted on the mass of Australian workers under this policy of oxtortioiv by,violence and intimidation that it is as much opposed to the interest of those who engage in it as to that of the fellowworkers by whom its immediate effects are most acutely felt. It is, of course, true, however, that even in the case of those who extort illusory concessions by "direct action," the apparent rain is far outweighed by its blighting effect on general progress and advancement. It is fairly/widely recognised in Australia that the present upheaval is much less a struggle between Labour and Capitalism than an attempt by a limited but militant section of organised Labour to subordinate national interests, and all other interests, to what it assumes to be its own. The Melbourne Ari/us, for instance, reported recently that the strike was so seriously, affecting other unions that great pressure was being brought to bear on union leaders generally to use what influence they could to bring the trouble to an end. ' "Whatever may occur," it was added, "'so far as the present strike is concerned, it is certain that the policy of 'direct action' is being rapidly discredited by bitter experience , among the rank and file of the unionists." Other 1 evidence on the point has been afforded in events like the recent split in the New South Wales branch of 1 the Labour Party, which was essentially a defeat for tho extreme "industrialists," and it is amplified in one of to-day's cablegrams, which states that speakers in a strike demonstration at Sydney "warned other unions that unless they supported the ,seamen's claims everyone would suffer." Australian unionists who are not dead to common sense are bound to set against this impudent injunction the fact that by persisting during; the past eight weeks in the assertion of an utterly unjust demand the seamen have condemned tens of thousands of other workers and their dependants to suffer. .Whether or not it is true that the Australian coal-mincrs are unfavourable to a strike—they may'well be with the disastrous fiasco of 1917 still fresh in memory—there certainly are indications of returning sanity in the Australian Labour movement. Hostility to the extremists, though it has yet to gather head, seems to be widespread. On all reasonable grounds it ought to receive a tremendous impetus from the experience of the present contest in which it is so obvious that the interests of Labour as a whole are ibeing basely attacked and betrayed by its pretended champions.