UNITED LABOUR PARTY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 520, 23 November 1912, Page 3

UNITED LABOUR PARTY.

CONDUCTED BY THE DOMINION EXECUTIVE COUNCIL. (The Easter Conference of the United Labour Party voted to make no paper its special organ, but to provide official news and comments to any paper promising to regularly publish the same. The paper is not responsible for this column, and the party assumes no responsibility for any utterances of the paper except for its own official uterances in this department.)

FEDERATION TACTICS. 1 ADOPTED BY THE MASSEY GOVERNMENT. The official statement of the Federation of Labour concerning the situation in Waihi is quite as interesting as anything recently appearing in the public press. The Federation statement deals at great length with the insulting words and brutal threats and the lawless conduct of those opposed to the strike. But it no longer presents the Federation itself as a warlike, militant, fearless, aggressive movement, seeking martrydom on the scaffold, and declaring for and supporting a war policy.

One would understand by this statement that the Federation people have njver insulted anyone, the men have never been disorderly, the women have never abused each other, the worst offence which a woman hhs committed is to be "standing quietly by," while the outrage of "throwing billies of tea into their faces" was perpetrated by their enemies. This will be news to the friends and champions of militant tactics, of a class war, and that war to be waged not in obedience to the capitalist laws and without regard to the capitalist authorities.

Does the Dominion stand for the defence of the oatrages reported in its own columns? Does it stand for the milicious characterisation of the people which have filled the news columns, not in the Dominion alone, but all other papers which have been obliged to depend for news upon the Press Association?

Is the Dominion the champion of the law when it can use the law against its enemies, and the champion of disorder and lawlessness when disorder and lawlessness may be used to serve its own purposes?

There can be no question now. The effort has been made deliberately. The Dominion has been the spokesman and the prophet and the defender in this effort. The effort has been made to confuse the whole labour movement of New Zealand with the tactics of the Federation of Labour, and as has been stated before, to put the whole Labour movement in a single sack, and then under the prstence of maintaining order, to sink the sack.

The United Labour party has refused to give its support to the indefensible tactics of the Federation. The effort has been made to make it appear that it is impossible to dissent from the tactics of the Federation without giving support to the policy of the Massey Government. No position is more absurd. The great public of New Zealand, ninety-nine of a hundred of the workers of New Zealand, have never been in sympathy with, and never will be in sympathy with, the disorderly, impossible tactics of the Federation, and the Dominion and its friends will not be long in making a discovery that the great body of the people of New Zealand will not stand for the recent outrages perpetrated in Waihi under the pretence of maintaining order. Regardless of the wrong conduct of the miners, the agencies of the law must not be used to take sides in an industrial dispute. The only possible apology for the presence of the police in Waihi is with an even hand, and without discrimination to protect all parties against the wrong conduct of all-comers. If the Dominion insists that this is being done, will it explain the absence of a single blow struck or single arrest made in connection with the disorderly occurrence reported in its own news columns? Until it has done so fair-minded people will re serve final judgment for further information on many matters, but in the meantime in the attacks and counter-attacks between the Federation of Labour and the Massey Government, each party to the war is telling a good bit of plain truth about the other.

The decent people of New Zealand, the real Labour movement of New Zealand, must not be directed into taking sides in a conflict where both sides are wrong. The Federation has already been discredited. The Massey Government cannot avoid falling into the same discredited position. It has adopted the practices of the Federation and here in its own columns defends the tactics of the Federation when practised by its own side in the fight.

The workers mu3t continue their contention that the tactics are wrong. They cannot De justified, they must not be used by anyone. Mr Massey and hig associates and Mr Sample and his associates shall not be permitted to resort to criminal violence, the- one against the other.

The demand of every employer who is not a scoundrel and of every working man who is not a fool must be that industrial dispute shall be honestly and peacefully adjusted "on the lines of legally .established agree-