Violence and Solidarity

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 4, 1 May 1913, Page 3

Violence and Solidarity

The Industrial Union promises the only possible safeguard against violence in industrial warfare. In proportion as that Union develops, and its members acquire the necessary knowledge, discipline, etc., violence will decrease, in inverse ratio, as the membership increases. This has been proven by past experience.

The Working Class has been subjected to a discipline, in wageslavery, that begets the patience, self-restraint, and fortitude which go with the peaceful pursuits of creating, producing, building, etc., a discipline which will stand them in good stead in their future conflicts with their masters, in the world-wide struggle for the Control of Industry.

The Capitalists to-day fear that their ‘‘ poor deluded slaves” may wake up and imitate their masters’ violent tactics and inaugurate the “ Red Terror;” that the age-long repression that has been meted out to the toilers may some day find vent in a general rebellion; and in their vision of militant labour, as a giant awakened, they imagine a fury let loose—a fury that shall devour them in revenge of the accumulated wrongs of generations. Influenced largely by these lurking fears they take every possible step to prevent any mass uprising of the workers. They institute arbitration courts to chloroform the workers and perpetuate divisions in their ranks; they subsidise the press with the same object in view; they adopt benevolent methods in

dealing with some of their slaves, and violent repressive methods in dealing with others; they organise bogus unions and glorify the scab who masquerades as a genuine arbitration unionist; in short, they cajole, threaten, deceive, confuse and divide the working class in every way possible. But nothing can avert the final triumph of the Working Class; each year sees a great growth of Industrial Solidarity, and with that growth acts of violence, on the part of the workers, decrease in number. The folded arms of the mass and the silent workshop are more potent than the violent acts of the exasperated few. Industrial solidarity will obviate violence.—C.T.R.