“LEADERS” WHO DON'T LEAD.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 42, 22 December 1911, Page 7

“LEADERS” WHO DON'T LEAD.

A striking feature of recent indu«-| trial upheavals is the repudiation of the;"leadetr" fetish. t and more the workers are? thinking for themselves, less and fleas j are permitting those who get into posi- | tions of authority to think for t-nem-j 1 am glad of this. A .mob of sheep., j blindly following the tinkling of a -bell,; is not my coneeptHMa of the Labor j movement. s The "leader" so seldom leads. He s becomes cowed by his -responsibilities; and hangs back. Or he grows giddy j with conceit;, ands rushes to disaster. The Labor movement, I take it, is at its best the spontaneous coming '"j togetiier of the workers suffering injustice, and their -spontaneous inarehiivg.: forward .determined oil *the righting of I their wrongs. ■ ■■ . \ The so-called ' 'leaders" are merely; those of the rank and file who 'have 1 been sent ahead to reconnoitre the; country and blaze the traak. j The great strike in England, accord- i ing to Ben Tillett, was entered upon; in defiance of the '''leader®/' who not j unnaturally shrsfhk from giving tihe i word for a conflict so gigantic and pro- j mising so poorly for success. \ The same thing is constantly hap- j pening in Australia. The workers in a j crisis take affairs into their own hands I and push the "leaders" along. ; It's a healthy sign. ' The Labor movement is an organism * that must not think with its head j alone, but must think all over., with; its whole body.—H. E. Boote, in Syd- j ney ""Worker/ 1 j

Socialism is gradually becoming respectable. Nat-ice the daily papers m®w only blame a, man fm foeiwg ml "extreme" Socialist. 'limy know well enough it is only the '/'extreme" Sot cialists tliat count.