Strike!

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 25, 25 August 1911, Page 10

Strike!

Strike on "a'huge scale, strike on a stirring scale, strike on a united scale! —of this the newspapers have been full as the cables have spit blood a;nd heat. It is movement delirious, delicious! Movement at last; revolutionary evolution. The widespread strikes in Great Britain are blaziiigly expressive of the volcanic fulcrum upon which the Empire rests. No one need marvel, at the intensity of them —rather let one ponder on the meaning of them. For the -are- symptomatic of the debasement a<nd discontent fattened bj 7 wanton and dastardly ill-usage of Britain's Bottom Dog. Wβ wonder how many of the cable readers, piously horrified in their deathly complacency, give a thought to the underlying causes of the sensational strikes they affrigihtedly deplore? The strikes are terrible, yet the- causes of them a.re terribler —and the one who sees the causes sees hidden horror outdistancing seen terror, and behind the black deeds the blacker creeds responsible for them. How can strikes be 1 stopped if something as ruthless as the grave shoots them into operation? How can strikes be avoided if an imperious Something insists on making strikes unavoidable ? ' ; How can strikes be deplored if they aii'o inevitable? . Not the strikes, but the conditions breeding them demand examination— not: the strikers but their manufacturers demand. annihilation! Underneath the strikes is their necessity, their explanation, and their justification. Consider: starvation wages, unending struggle, diseased homes, poisonous food, stunted minds, stifled childhood, defiled daughterhood, degraded motherhood, maddened manhood—these and redder 'infamy constitute the social abyss in which the people of" Britain Sweat and sin. raced by the shudder and the shadow of death. / ' There is not a man or woman in New Zealand who dare stand forth and claim as relatively fair the conditions against which the strikers are hurling themselves. Neither hours nor wages, neither employment nor opportunity, neither treatment nor prospects are such as any self-respecting person could accept, endure or defend. Thus it is that the strikes in Britain —as strikes anywhere and always—are gloriously objective in their lessons. They teach us that men are still ready to revolt againt foul and unjust slavery. They" teach us that degeneracy and decadence have not yet crushed the . exploited as they have cursed them. They teach us that men are on the march towards emancipation. If : the Empire but realised it the, signs of its own potentialities and the demonstrations..of- its own virility are these significantly great strikes mow amazing a world. They are phases of the one war that matters —the Class War. This is the only war that need conncrn. the working-class. Giving full credit, to the seeming spontaneity of the sudden striking, let it not be overlooked- how that in all probability these strikes are from the stimulus of Industrial Unionism —the newer and the- trueor unionism which emphasises the strength and solidar-. i'ty springing from "each for all and all' for each," and which is not a merely sentimental abstraction but a practical plan so concrete in its workableness as to be staggering, especially to capitalism. The strikes of which we have been reading display athwart their methods the beginning of an understanding of the folly and crime of working-class scabbery. So, a growing reliance of union upon union, and a growing determination of union plus unions to

aid each other—and all —by refusing to handle blackleg production, : aiid y by common boycotting of..the boss and his creatures. For this ; pregnant situation—the grasping of successful (because scientific) ' industrial warfare—it' ' may ,be taken for ■ granted' that Tom Mann's vigorous pi'opaganda is largely respon-. sible. Wβ doubt if the earth holds a; greater industrial fighter than Tom Mannj and much in the able and milittuut way he gave to Australia a real Socialism he has returned to Gxeat. Britain to give it a real Unionism. (And will the arbitrationist of New Zealand halt awhile in his thoughtless zeal to recall that Tom Mann came to New Zealand an enthusiastic arbitrationist and left New Zealand and Australia convinced that industrial arbitration was unmistakably ruinous to' working-class thought and action.) But industrial warfare increasingly levels political and other divisions in working-class circles, and hence the strengthen ing belief that the Social Revolution will have its birth on the industrial field—the - field of natural unity — and hence% of a certainty, the shoulder-to-shoulder conduct of Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, Keir Hardie, and Ramsay Mac Donald, whose terse cable utterances are periods of fire, and will become historical. To New Zealand, the of Great Britain—as also of the success-fully-concluded sugar strike of Queensland —furnish undeniable evidence of the supreme value of the strike weapon and the supreme danger of the soldier. ... . . - We need not stay to stress the obvious menace to the workers of the latter'as recently exemplified: the soldier, is the servant of the capitalist State and shoots his own countrymen nine times to the foreign foe's once, and his own class always. . But in a day and a place where it is continuously alleged that the strike is obsolete- it must be eye-opening to see the. strike bulking Avith colossal portent and intent as working-class way out of Darkest W-agedom. A rallying to the strike is everywhere noticeable, but! not to the sectional form of strike (obsolete, verily) but to the linked-up strike of class-consciousne.sS'. The workers of the world have glimpsed a new truth and perceive past striko history a.s the evolutionary preparation for the revolutionary .strike — the sectional ripening in the united. For New Zealand, "Away with Arbitration!" is plain, if unpleasant, duty, and th© sooner New Zealand does its duty the sooner shall workers , lives be brighter, surer and fuller. Make perfect a,s you can our arbitration, and still never get United Action in indxistrial betterment. Sectionalism is arbitration's very centre. For the unions seeking Unity, and ready to fight for Unity, the N.Z. Federation of Labor stands defiantly offering itself a« equipped and educated for the Unity of industrial Unionism. Just this may be added about the strike: it is weapon accepted by the workers of the world; and weapon by which we are obliged to measure work-ing-class progress, noting as the outcome of its utility great strides in every land. Thus in Great Britain we trace the rise of the New Unionism to the Dock Strike (as from this out we shall trace the rise of the Newer Unionism to the present strikes). Thus in America we trace a mighty Socialist movement accelerated by the Cripple Creek strike—or Colorado conspiracy. Thus in Australia we date workingclass politics from ma\ritime and shearers' strikes. Thus in Continental countries we trace the beginnings of universal enfranchisement, governments brought to heel, and wondrous illustrations of the Power wielded by the men. who have gripped that by labor is all wealth produced, and so when labor tmitedly "folds arms" it can starve the stomachs of its oppressors. The strike! —the strike of a class — upon this pathway shall the workers march to victory and the ownership of all they do, all they make, and all they want.