UNIONS AND WAR EFFORT

Evening Star, Issue 23701, 8 October 1940, Page 8

UNIONS AND WAR EFFORT

NO COMPROMISE WITH NAZISM PRESIDENT'S STIRRING DECLARATION (British Official Wireless.) Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright IRUGBY, October 7. (Received October 8. at 10.12 a.m.) “ I regard the past year’s work with pride and satisfaction. We have surrendered or compromised no vital trade union interest. On the contrary, we have secured for trade union principles a fuller measure of recognition and a more extended application of these principles, and, I believe, a more generous understanding and appreciation of them than ever before.” These words were spoken to 650 delegates attending the Trade Union Congress by the president, Mr William Holmes. The attitude of organised labour in Britain towards the prosecution of the war was unequivocally expressed: “ Against the organised powers of evil in the assault upon our freedom and life, the entire resources of our nation and the Commonwealth of British Nations have been mobilised, and we can claim that the trade unions represented in this assembly have made their full contributions to the war effort. No further revelation than we have had of the malignant cruelty, treachery, and inhumanity of the forces arrayed against us can do more than strengthen our resolve. It cannot terrorise us or us flinch. We know now beyond a shadow of doubt,” Mr Holmes said, “if any of us doubted it before, that we are fighting an evil thing. It makes war by the vilest means 5 it practises cold-blooded cruelty and frightfulness as a system; it spares nothing—neither woman, babies, cripples, nor aged people in the centres of civilian population, nor the sick in the hospitals, nor the helpless children moving to places of safety across the stormy seas.

“ Even of greater importance than the contribution our movement is now making to the effective organisation of the nation’s war effort is the service it will be called upon to give in rebuilding the life of the nation after the war. Not only will there be a rebuilding of the material structure of our life, but there must also be a guarantee in our social and economic arrangements that the human needs of every man, woman, and child shall be satisfied, that the food, clothing, and shelter which a properly-organised industrial social order can amply provide shall be available to. all, and that freedom of thought and speech and association shall be reaffirmed and safeguarded.” Sir Walter Citrine said the Genera] Council realised that the outcome of the war would determine whether the trades union movement as they had known it would continue or would be extinguished, and all the way through the council had tried to remember that as part of the nation it was their duty to concentrate as much as they could on the successful prosecution of the war. The decision to enter the Government was made by Labour freely of its own choice from its own interest.

Referring to the many in this country who have literally lost all they possess, Mr W. Holmes declared that it was the nation’s bounden duty to provide alternative accommodation for those rendered homeless. “ People who go to shelters spend hours in them, and must obtain hot drinks and food,” he said. “ When they are able to leave the shelters many go straight to work without a chance of returning home for a meal.” The problem of better arrangements for shelters and safer refuges was not insoluble. Sir Walter Citrine, speaking at the annual meeting of the Trades Union Congress at Southport, in reference to the present Coalition Government, said the General Council had tried to preserve an attitude of collaboration, and had been able very greatly to shape the policy of the present Government by persistent representation to its colleagues who held Ministerial posts.