THE Maoriland Worker

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 82, 4 October 1912, Page 4

THE Maoriland Worker

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1912.

IWr. Reardon, Mr. Walsh and liebknecht.

It seems quite impossible to get Mr. Reardon to speak up like a man in defence of the. Wellington Trades Council's attitude to the Waihi strike.

Mr. Reardon knows that attitude and he knows our attitude to that attitude. It was all chronicled and reviewed in our issues of June 21, 23 and July 5, 12, 10, and 2G.

What is advanced in the leading articles of these dates will in all probability form the material for a pamphlet. We. would have wished the contentions tested.

We have endeavored to make Mr. Reardon meet and defend the charges of hypocrisy and treachery deliberately levelled by us at the Council of which he is president. He either upholds the positions taken up by the Council or is frightened to say otherwise. In any case, lie proves himself unworthy of working-class trust.

Mr. Reardon is the official head of the Council, and must bo supposed as largely guiding its decisions and moulding its policy. His conduct as workingclass representative has been questioned and he himself indicted —yet he will keep wriggling and wobbling rather than stand to his colors.

In the leading articles cited wo mentioned Mr. Reardon by name, showed how he supported the tramway strikers and reneged on the Waihi strikers., and we castigated unambiguously the school of thought to which he belongs. Will he attempt to answer us? Can we olfer more?

This conduct is the real issue. When, then, Mr. Reardon asks: "May I bring you back to the issue?" he is plainly shuffling. Every other issue in dispute has been disposed of. We are not inclined to repeat, for Mr. Reardon's idle curiosity, all that we have said on this head. Mr: Reardon knows what wo have snid, and he well knows the "actual incidents" upon which our charges arc based. The incidents arc Trades Council's' decisions and acts regarding the- strike and lock-out, including a snivelling untenable statement sent to Australia. We replied, to that statement; let Mr. lleardon uphold that statement.

We care not how shriekfully Mr. Reardon describes our charges, our allegations, our censures—will lie meet them, expose them, refute them?

We cannot believe that Mr. Reardon disclaims all responsibility for his Council's deeds and therefore that his own name is not involved in the blame?

And now, is it worth while pointing out thai: Mr. Reardon practically admitted himself as satisfied with our provisional acceptance of his original denial of Mr. Hickey's assertion and that he and not us labelled our accusations as "crime" —which label, it must be admitted, we were ready to accept as expressing in the strongest way Mr. Reardon's inexcusable "turning-down" of tho Waihi strike. Jt is a crimein the working-class movement. If Mr. Roardon is smarting under tho supposition that we consider him a. criminal in the orLlndox sense, we gladly relieve him of the smart. We. do not think ho is. We fancied ho would know it.

We- really must add that the secondlast paragraph of our correspondent's letter reads hollow. Wo believe lie himself thinks that hnd he cared to speak up for his miserable. Council directly wo had smitten it hi.-; copy would have been rushed. For you cannot argu<> with an oyster.

ft, \uiuld In- :i j'ily if ihi> spolh'ss Mr. Reardon decivod himself: ho li.v not put any "lying insinuations" down our throat. Nono has been mad' , . Weeks wo dialleii&ed Mi. Kcuidmi

to name on" editorial untruth or cite

cue editorial misquotation in regard to himself. Thai, challenge "s still open.

By the way, will Mr. Rcardon f-nv tvhat ho thinks of the conduct of Mr. T. Walsh, secretary of the Auckland District Council of the United Labor "Party (Mr. Jloarflon's strike-breaking party) in travelling to Waikino to hearten and organic the scabs there?

"We say that- in Australasian Lahor history there is not on record an incident, so traitorous nor an act so dastardly.

Tins Walsh, in the sacred name of Labor—a fool and a knave both —has been associated with an "official organ"' rotten to the coiro, and time and timeagain lias wantonly and wickedly spoken as a vredentialed Labor representative in a way that in the Russian movement would see him hanged and :n tlie movement anywhere else than '.v New Zealand see him drummed out as worse than Judas and as contemptible as all known "rats" and agents-pro-vocateurs. This man, who goes to AVaikino and Waihi on a strike-breaking expedition, who enrols the scabs into an arbitration union, who returns to Auckland and glorifies the police and employers, win wretchedly befouls and lies about the strikers and their policy—this silly ignoramus is an official of high standing of Mr. .Iveardon's United Labor Party of masterly and perfidious workingclass wreckers. Mr. Keardon will perhaps understand our iron hatred of apostasy — ho seems not to have, iindorstood that wo of the Federation arc fighting for very life -if ho reads the following by William Liebknecht :-- "The enemy who comes to us with open visor we face with a smile; to set our foot upon his neck is men , play for us. The stupidly brutal acti-i of violence of police politicians, tho outrages of anti-Socialist laws, the anti-revolution laws, penitentiary bills—these only arouse feelings of pitying contempt; the enemy, however, that reaches out the hand for ■us for a political alliance and introduces himself tipon us as a friend and brother— him and him alone hava we to fear. "Our fortress can withstand every assault. —it cannot be stormed no ,- taken from us by sioge—it can 'only fall when we ourselves epen the doors to the enemy and take him Into our ranks as a fellow comrade. Growing out of the class struggle, our party rests upon the class struggle a a a condition of its existence Through and with that struggle the party is unconquerable; without it. the party is lost, for ife will have lost the source of its strength. "Whoever fails to understand this or thinks that the class struggle is a dead issue, or t.liafc class antagonisms are gradually being effaced, stands upon the basis of bourgeois philosophy." Let every reader scrapbook that excorpt.