The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1928. SANITY RETURNING.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 September 1928, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1928. SANITY RETURNING.

When the establishment of tho Soviet Republic had moused the sympathies of La tour throughout tho world, and the influence of Bolshevism had readied a high pitch of intensity, n great many people were inclined to anticipate that sooner or later tho workers of Britain would follow the lead of Russia and organise a violent social and industrial revolution Against this bcliei it was urged that the political and social traditions of the British people, and the peculiarities of their racial temperament, would always prove effective obstacles to any such “catastrophic” development. To-day we have ample proof, says an exchange, that the fundamental sanity of the British worker has reasserted itself, that the wage-earners are anxious not to fight the employer, but to co-operate with him, and the watchword of Labour is now to be not “war,” but “peace.” Before the recent Trade Union Congress met at. Swansea the grcnt issui between the rival parties in the Labour camp, seemed still to lie doubtful and uncertain. But the leaders of the “left wingers” concentrated their efforts on what at first might appear a subsidiary point—the question whether the policy of the unions in supporting the so-called Mond Conference between workers and employers was to be endorsed or not. On this topic Mr A. J. Cook and his friends expended all the resources of their hysterical rhetoric, hut all to no purpose. By a majority of nearly five to one the conference supported the policy of the General 'Council, which was resolved to carry on amicable discussions with the employers; and by an even more impressive “plurality” a resolution was carried rejecting any and every attempt to link up the British Labour movement with the Third International and the Bolshevik hierarchy at Moscow. The present situation has been admirably summarised by two of the most influential Labour leaders of the day. Mr J. H. Thomas declares that the Conference marks' a new era in the relations of Capital and Labour, booause the workers have now emphatically recorded their decision in favour of “the resort to reason instead of force.” And Air Walter Citrine, general secretary of the Congress, who has been extremely active of late in the campaign against Bolshevism, regards the conference as fixing “a turn-ing-point in the economic life of Britain,” because it proves that the unions are now at last bent on making some practical contribution towards “a solution of national ills.” Without any desire to exaggerate the value of such evidence, we may fairly regard the Swansea Conference as establishing r new epoch in the history of British Labour, which has now cmplintioalh declared its intention of co-operating with Capital to solve by peaceful anti rational moans the great industria problems of the age.