Exodus !

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 92, 20 December 1912, Page 1

Exodus !

Wonderful Solidarity at Wafhi

FAREWELL SOCIAL.

The Waihi miners have decided they won't join- the scab onion, won't sign the employment book at the scab union office, and won't remain in Waihi.

Waihi will live in the industrial history of Australasia and indeed of the world as a place to be reprobated; its name will be read into working-class history as "Scab Town."

Driven out with police batons and revolvers and threats of pe_sonal violence on November 12 and 13, their hall raided and seized, their safe burglarised, their store broken into, their lives in jeopardy, they have since returned, have recaptured their hall and store, have forced the police to hand back the property that was stolen on November 12, and now they are preparing for the final great exodus.

Never before in the history of the Australasian working-class has such splendid solidarity been witnessed ; never before has such utter corruption on the part of a government, such barefaced villainy on the part of the employiugclass, such backing of thuggery and brutality on the part of the police, been Been in any part of the Australasian colonies—not even in those days whose sun shed light on the bloodstained field of Ballarat. Still, with every capitalist paper shrieking victory for the owners and masters —a victory that could never have been recorded but for the fact that many trade unions were ready to scab, and did scab, on the Waihi men—now, after a seven months' struggle, in which every shred of individual and personal interest has been cheerfully sacrificed for the oolleeitivc .well-being, these sturdy men and splendid women are shaking the dust of this scab-infested locality from their feet.

Houses and furniture, often the result of a life-time's savings, are being sacrificed without a murmur, and the wealth-makers are turning their eyes towards other fields of industry.

On Monday evening, December 9, a farewell social was held in the Miners' Hall, which was crowded to overflowing with a laughing, happy crowd of men, women and children, who sang and danced through the speeding hours of the night, and only disbanded when the "wings of dawn were beating at the gates of day."

The recant lire of the hall was a master-stroke—something to mark an epoch in tin history of die strike: so also w-;is n;o of the store, and this farewell social was ai>o an opochmarking incident. For seven months these men and women had fought the good fight of industrial freedom.

They had soon the armed police poured into their midst; they had seen the Massey Government allying itself with the mine-owners; they had seen all the newspaper strength of the masters hurled against them; they had seen tho effort to starve them into submission endorsed by the Labor Party; they had seen that drunken fury of death and hell lot loose against thorn on November 12: they had seen authority run riot and murder done in the name of law. It had really looked as if the night of darkness and defeat had forever blotted out the sunshine of human hope. And they had risen in their class-conscious strength superior to every circumstance. They had met. less than a month from the day of offi-cially-organised disaster, to reaffirm their working-class solidarity, to say their good-byes, and, having said them, to go forth seeking new masters, new buyers for the strength of their lives— and to further strive and labor for the i coming of a grander and better day, I

when the sun of economic righteousness shall arise "with healing in his wings" and emancipation in every ray of light he hurls across the pathways of the children of men.

Never before were songs sung as these "defeated" men and women sang them ; never beforei were speakers so heartily cheered as wore Parry, McLennan, Melrose) (men across whose lives the jail's walls had only yesterday flung their shadows), and P. Fraser were applauded ; and never before was "Auld Lang Syne" sung as that assemblage sang it on December 9.

Surely our working-class movement has never previously seen a strike that has been "declared off" have such a marvellous ending. A town's workingclass population moves out in an almost solid body rather than submit to scab conditions.—H.E.H.