The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, MAY 30, 1919. THE STRIKE LESSON

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10293, 30 May 1919, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. FRIDAY, MAY 30, 1919. THE STRIKE LESSON

Nothing is more seductive than the doctrine that total paralysis of all utilities by a .general strike is the certaia, reniedy-for~ all grievances. And no-, thing is more certain than that tins sovereign remedy is always a disastrous failure. Therefore nothing can be mora correct than the recent statement of Mr Veitch, M.P., that "Industrial warfare is almost as disastrous as in ; ternational warfare," or so convincing as his conclusion that "we cannot afford the one to follow the other. We'-have?but to look round in the present, and look back into the "past, for proofs of the futility of industrial warfare. In the present the most prominent thing is the maritime strike in Melbourne. That movement is plainly designed as the nucleus of a. general strike which is to paralyse every utility in Australia. It has been long predicted. From it . the originators have expected everything, and its opponents have regarded its coming with something like proportionate teal It has come, and,what do we see. certainly not the uprising of all Labour,, organised and otherwise, combined m a universal effort to win their desire by paralysis of all the State machinery "We see instead divisions widening in the ranks of Labour; We see "loyalists"—men who, being dependent on the public utilities are working with main strength in the place vacated by the strikers; 'we see these protected by the power of the State, which is bound to protect the general interest from assaults of every kmdj we see the very strikers complaining of scarcity of food, and that though nothing like the effect intended by a general strike has been even remotely approached. If we look to the other end of the world, we have the lessons of Glasgow and Belfast, in °oth ol which .places the, campaign of the strike failed signally to attain its object of universal paralysis. Turning back to past days we note fiist, naturally, the great French railway strike engineered by that now al-most-forgotten body, the O.G.T. —Confederation General du Travail —which, after sending a wave of terror over all Europe, collapsed in seven days. Tho Government of M. Briand, ;who himself had been in the ranks of the Syndicalists and had preached general strike from the housetops and the soapboxes, adopted the expedient of mobilising the railway men under the military law. The expedient was simple, and prompt in action. But it owed its power not to its simplicity, but to the fact that the signal given by the railway strike, which was to have paralysed society by the strike of every department of Labour, failed to move anyone. Tho O.G.T. called all the spirits. from the vasty deep of Labour, and the spirits would not come. Standing alone, the railway men collapsed at the first touch from the representatives of the nation. This could not have been done, but that the rottenness of the general strike plan was obvious to all men. The fanatics of the O.G.T. burned Briand in effigy, and if their invectives had been fatal i there would not have been labour enough left In France to bury the dead. I After all, however, the invectives were fatal, for they cam© home, and the O.G.T. died an early death.

Going further back we see the great maritime strike of Australasia, and nowhere on the earth can wo discern failures of such . colossal magnitude. The movement in Australia for the formation of One Big Union —the 0.8.TJ. —was organised for the purpose of compelling all Labour to unite at the given signal for the general paralysis. The-idea was to prevent such disobedience to the central authority as was

responsible for the grievous defeats of the past. But there never was an instance of fidelity and obedience so complete as the obedience s>.nd fidelity given in the maritime strike. Compulsion- by 0'.8.U. law must fail where sympathetic sentiment could not succeed. The defect declared by the 0.8. U. in the oxisting Labour organisation is that men without a grievance will not strike to help those who are aggrieved. The complaint "gives away the show," for it calls for the enforcement of the will of a minority. That is undemocratic; but tho negation of democracy is not new. The leaders of the Australasian maritime strike turned their backs on Parliament, which, with all its faults, is democracy embodied, and scorned everything constitutional. One wellknown writer (Lagardelle) says that Syndicalism is "a reaction against Democracy." Ben Tillett has declared that "Labour loses its sting, its zeal for the holy war, when it associates with Democracy." What else can be said when ono union tries to coerci all others into coercing the majority of the nation by paralysis? Well might Jaures, who could not, in his lifetime, exactly be called a friend of _ capitalism, say: "The general strike is a trap for the workers. It seems to them simple, but it is really very complicated." "Workers who are inducrd to forget that they are also consumers, discover at. an early period of a strike that, they, with their wires and children, suffer hunger and thirst and want of firing. Then are they driven to sabotage. And sabotage turns the whole world against them.