MAKE YOUR CHOICE

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 6, 1 July 1913, Page 2

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

“ There is no time like the present” has very particular application just now to the workers deciding’ what sort of Industrial Unionism they are going to be satisfied with. It has been observed that different schools of Industrial Unionism are springing up, but it is certain that the “ dou-ble-wing” forms of organisation such as the Unity scheme being hatched in Wellington cannot, by any stretch, be categorised with the “ schools” at all.

Some twelve months ago the N.Z.F. of L. Conference adopted the I.W.W. Preamble and a constitution providing for eight industrial departments. Since then the Federation Executive have had ample opportunity to call on the membership to practice the principles so clearly set forth in that preamble. Instead of acting up to the principle of “ an injury to one is an injury to all” we have seen what has happened in the cases of Waihi, Auckland, Huntly, Timaru, etc.

We need hardly trouble to point out that little or nothing has been done to organise on the lines of the

Constitution; we will assume that there have been too many difficulties in the way —the political activities of the officials, etc. —and we will leave the question of form out, but how long are we to wait for a manifestation of militancy in the leaders ? How much nearer to breaking point is the loyalty of the rank and file to be strained ?

Two years or so ago the Federation was a promising organisation and the tendencies were apparently right. If, since then, the organisation had gone as far forward as it has gone backward there would be no need, no excuse, for another organisation, such as the 1.W.W., making its appearance, but the Federation lias drifted from bad to worse, and nothing short of a miracle can save the one-time Fighting Federation from being smothered and destroyed by a political labour-reform party with liberal and single-tax tendencies, for politics and compromise mean death to a revolutionary industrial movement, and the Federation has dabbled in politics and compromise. \

Within the next few years the workers will require all the industrial solidarity they can develop to meet the machinations of the Employers, but there is little prospect of industrial unionism from a conference which appears to be con-

centrating on the destruction of the Massey Government, amendment of the Arbitration Act, a citizen army, and the single-tax. Industrial Unionism is not difficult to understand, and it is chiefly the politician and the labour misleader who stand in the way and preveut the growth of a powerful industrial organisation. Their power to injure the working class movement, however, rests mainly on the 'apathy of the rank and file. It is up to you, Avorking men of NeAV Zealand, to wake up and take more interest in your oavii affairs. In the near future you ay ill have to choose betAveen real,

sound Industrial Unionism —one industrial organisation, of all the Avorkers, constructed on proper lines, using up-to-date methods of Avarfare and aiming straight for the overthrow and dispossession of the Capitalist Class —and a hodgepodge scheme which will land you in the blind alley of political reform. Which are you going to choose P