SOLIDARITY STILL SPREADING

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 17, 18 November 1913, Page 1

SOLIDARITY STILL SPREADING

Strike Extending South

Who Planted that Dynamite?

Demand an Investigation

ALLEGED DYNAMITE PLANT NEAR AUCKLAND. SUSPICION THROWN ON EMPLOYERS. ISTHE “HERALD” INVOLVED? UGLY RUMOURS OF IMPORTED TACTICS.

It is hardly conceivable that, at this stage of industrial development in New Zealand, a desperate minority of the N.Z.E.F. could persuade respectable, law-abiding, level-headed New Zealanders to resort to the fiendish expedient of planting real explosives on the line and taking the risk of their tool failing to remove them in time —only a few moments being allowed ; so we can only conclude that the desperate expedient of planting dummy explosives was resorted to, if the Employers’ Federation really did sanction the plot officially. These ugly suspicions have been freely discussed by strikers over the week-end. It is certain that if this alleged plot is not sifted thoroughly by Labour men, and the conspirators brought to book, the workers will never be free from that terrorism of strikers which, when used by employers, is so rarely punished. If the Lawrence plot had not been discovered and exposed by a fortunate accident it is certain that several innocent I.W.W. organisers would now be doing life sentences —if they escaped the electric chair. It is equally certain that if the local plot had not been so ridiculously amateurish the daily papers would have made great capital against the strikers, and that many staunch men of the working class would now be in jail on “ circumstantial evidence.” This new development in industrial warfare in New Zealand will have to be closely guarded against, or there will be no security for strikers against long terms of imprisonment for nothing but loyalty to their class, if the alleged dangerous element in the employing class is not exposed.

The desperate shifts to which the employers have been reduced during the last few days, as indicated by the press and other methods, have prepared the public mind for almost anything; but the reported “ discovery” of a large amount of dynamite, planted in front of the southbound express, must come as a shock, not only to New Zealand Wrokers, but to the more level-headed of the employing class themselves. The daily papers have reported that several plugs ( of gelignite, fitted with detonators, were bound together and planted op the line just before the Main Trunk express was timed to pass the spot, on Thursday last. The story, as reported by the two Auckland dailies, carries all the evidence of a clumsy capitalist plot, similar to the. methods of American employers. The “ Herald ” reported the affair in its usual semihysterical style; the “Star,” better balanced and more intelligent, dismissed the story with a sarcastic comment. But the extreme clumsiness with which this apparent attempt to discredit Labour was executed, and the suddenness with which the two capitalist papers have dropped the affair, rouses the suspicions of all discerning Labour men, and calls for some investigation, if not by the authorities, then by a committee of workers. The extremely flimsy assertion that a man played football with a bundle of plugs of gelignite, detonators and all, and lived to tell the story (after taking the explosives home and sleeping with them on the premises for several hours) ; the fact that several membeis of the Employers’ Federation are recent arrivals from America and —significant fact--the presence of M. J. Savage (strike delegate to Wellington), and Tom Barker (I.W.W. Organiser, on his way to Wellington Jail) on the train, vividly call to mind the recent dynamite exploits of desperadoes of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association of America.

The favourite method over there is to employ some half-witted or ignorant worker or small business man to plant dynamite; arrange to have a press reporter handy; and just “ discover ” it in time —the blame to be thrown on to strikers. Many such plots have failed in America: an instance is the case of members of the Woollen Trust in Lawrence, Mass. , which failed owing to the drunken confession of one of the conspirators.

Auckland, Wellington, Lyttelton and other Unions more Determined!