PETER BOWLING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 943, 19 January 1911, Page 4

PETER BOWLING.

LABOUR JOURNAL’S CRITICISM. The official organ of the New Zealand Trades and Labour Council and of the New Zealand Labour Party, the Weekly Herald, has some interesting relereuces to Mr Bowling, under the headings : ‘‘Poor Peter. How are the Mighty Fallen.” Says the Herald: ‘‘Just about six weeks ago Mr Peter Bowling entered New Zealand with a most aggressive air. He had scarcely set foot on Dominion soil before he was at the throat of the Wellington Trades Council because it abstained from attending an official welcome. Reduced to plain terms, the action of the Trades Council at that time amounted to a declaration that it regarded Mr Bowling as an impracticable extremist. Mr Bowling came to our shores as a man with a mission. He was above all things the apostle of industrial organisation in the militant sense, and he lost no time in making it clear that he regarded the machinery of industrial arbitration with unalloyed contempt. To put it plainly, Mr Bowling set his pace in opposition to the 50,000 unionists in whose organisation the existence of the Arbitration Court is an integral feature. He found appropriate associates only in the New Zealand Federation, otherwise the Miners’ Federation. Mr Bowling departed for the West Coast with a promise that he would deal ou his return with the weaklings of the Wellington Trades Council.” After detailing the defeat of Mr Bowling at the election for president of the Newcastle and Maitland Colliery Kmployees’ Federation, the Herald continues: “Into the Australian situation it is needless here to enter. The essential fact is that the downfall of Bowling in his own country has served to reduce local phenomena to their true values. Shorn of the glamour that clung to him as the accepted hero of men whom he had led in privation and suffering, Mr Bowling in his relation to New Zealand labour politics appears simplv as the apostle of an impossible creed. That he has of late considerably moderated his tune is the least commendable feature to be detected in his present altitude.”