The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1927.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 March 1927, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1927.

|| { THE IUGHT TO STRIKE The limits of the law of the him! in regal'd to strikes have never yet been fully defined. The Auckland “Star” however, in a close study of the subject which is of the highest importance to national security, points out that the Baldwin Government has already committed itself to the revision of British industrial law in regard to the rights and privileges of trade unions. Now it appears, from an announcement just made by the Earl of Birkenhead, that the Conservatives intend to fix more definitely the limits of the law respecting the general strike. The exact position in which the general strike stands has never yet been conclusively defined, for the sufficient reason that the British Courts never had to consider the question of the general strike before last year. Even, the dictum of Sir J. Simson, that a general strike is a direct breach of the law, though backed by his high legal reputation, still needs judicial and Parliamentary confirmation, and the Government apparently proposes to meet this want during the current session. It goes without saving that the Earl of Birkenhead’s statement will be quoted freely by the extremists of the Labour party as proof positive that the Government is determined to paralyse the unions and reduce Labour to impotence. It is based on the assumption that the general strike is like ' any other strike, simply an industrial movement But nothing can well be further from the truth than this. Tt is true that the general strike is largely industrial or economic in origin. But so are many wars, and no one could seriously contend that a war is purely an industrial conflict. The fact is that the general strike is an organised attempt to coerce community or a nation by depriving it of “the right to live” unless and until it consents to obey the

dictates of a. certain section of its industrialists. From this paint of view the general strike is as much a direct 1 attack upon the safely and the existI cure of the State as any overt treasonable net that could he perpetrated and conceived. The workmen ol Hritain are notoriously not given l > allstrict theories about political and economic questions Hut the majority of them saw very quickly that the general strike was in effect a blow aimed at the nation’s heart, and they speedily made up their minds that they would not bo parlies to the destruction of the country’s social and political life, particularly if they were expeetei to commit suicide at the same time. Tn this decision they were supported by the more moderate and rational o' their leaders, who distinguished clearly between the ordinary industrial strike and the mis-named general strike, which is io reality a s cial revolution. Therefore the Haldwin Government., if and when il decides to treat the general strike in a legislative sense as “a criminal conspiracy against the State,” will merely register the conviction which the nation as a whole has already expressed and acted upon. But if the right to strike be determined by law, there will be the obvious alternative in its place, the .settlements of disputes by legitimate means, u hereby the enforcement of arbitration decisions should lie as binding on one side as the other. Industrial unrest is all to prevalent and it is the cause of the growing unemployment, for there was never a strike or hold-up where employers were not forced Io reorganise more and more for security sake, and in the reorganisation have adopted machinery or other menus so as to lie less indebted to manual labor to carry on. Actually therefore, strike methods are a twoedged sword for the striker, and might, well he relegated to the past, and sane and logical measures provided instead.