The Dominion WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1921. AN APPEAL TO THE WATERSIDERS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 128, 23 February 1921, Page 4

The Dominion WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1921. AN APPEAL TO THE WATERSIDERS

The appeal addressed to the Wellington waterside workers by returned soldiers who have taken up fruit-farming at Motueka shou d not fall on deaf cars. It certainly will not be slighted or ignored if any regard is paid to justice and the merits of the ease. lhe brief telegram from the “Motueka Diggers” goes right to the point, and brings out very clearly the effect of the present hold-up by the wateisiders : —

Don’t let the old Diggers down. There are hundreds of us here depending on your loading fruit into Hororata. I lay the game. All who are. familiar with the facts will recognise that this appeal is more than justified. Recentlyestablished fruit-farmers as a rule have but a narrow financial .margin to conic and go upon, and it is, of course, essential to their success and prosperity that they should he enabled to got their crops to market. Such losses' a« the fruitfarmers at Motueka are threatened with in consequence of the waterside hold-up are in any case serious, particularly when they fall on soldier-settlers working with borrowed capital, and need not continue very long to bring these producers to ruin. It would bo bad enough if such losses were incurred unavoidably. ' It is quite intolerable that they should be incurred as the result of an irrational dispute in which the returned soldiers who seem'likely to suff ’r heavily have no' concern. Although the, Hororata was one of the ships on which labour was engaged before the present -trouble aro c e, detail developments have deprived her of most of the gongs employed to complete her loading, and it is, therefore, likely if the dispute continues that the shipment of fruit will be held up, with the results mentioned in a telegram f-o.’ii Nelson whi'h appears to day—heavy loss to the growers and the waste of a portion of their year’s work. Every watersidor will surely agree that this is not the treatment which ought to he meted out to.-men who fought for their country and are now entitled not merely to fair plav, but to help and sympathy in their efforts to regain a place in its civil lif-> worthy of the part they plaved in the. field. It is or ought, to.be unthinkable that the waterside workers world deliberately and of sei purpose inflict such an injustice, on returned soldiers as the hold-up of the Horo■rata’s fruit shipment would entail. Yet as far as can be judged at present this injustice will be inflicted unless the waterfront dispute is terminated in the only way that is possible—by the watersiders undertaking to work in terms of their agreement and give the guarantees asked for that it will be observed in future. It is quite clear also that the case of the “Motueka Diggers” is not isolated and peculiar. • It deserves to be held t)p prominently, not merely on its own merits, but because it perfectly illustrates the consequences of the waterfront dispute as a whole. A continiied hold-up on the' waterfront will inflict loss and hardship on all sections of the community, and it is everywhere on innocent people unconnected wilh the dispute that the heaviest consequences will fall. The flagrant injustice inflicted on the returned soldiers anti other fruitfarmers at Motueka is thoroughly typical of the general and widespread effect of the action of the watersiders in bringing work in the ports of the Dominion to a standstill. The position reached is that people all over the country are called upon to endure loss, inconvenience, and hardship simply in order that the watersitiers, ih this case, may practise belligerent tactics. This state of affairs would be hard to bear even if the watersiders were striving to wrest some warranted concession from their employers.. In actual fact no such issue is raised. So far as the dispute turns op money payment the amount in question is trivial, and if the WaterBidet's obtained all they are demanding it would not give them in months as much as many of them have already lost in the course of the present hold-up. . Work in the ports of the Dominion is being brought 'to a standstill because the watersiders refuse to give assurances and guarantees that they will henceforth keep good o faith in. maintaining their agreement. It is in these conditions that not. one but practically all sections of the population are called upon to endure losses and hardships of which the hold-up of the Hororata fruit shipment represents a conspicuous, though fvpteal. example. The plain truth is that the watersiders are persisting in their present >r K e for no reason at all that

will bear statement or examination. The utter futility and injustice of their present attitude ought to be apparent to the watersiders themselves —more so than ever in light of the appeal addressed to them lit/ the returned men at Motueka. They will take the wisest course open to them if they recognise that this appeal to “play the game” deserves to be responded to, not only on its intrinsic merits, but as the harbinger of a demand which the whole community is bound soo.mjf or later to frame and, if need be, enforce for the complete abandonment of the policy and tactics they arc now pursuing.