The New Zealand Times WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1926, STILL ANOTHER “STRATEGIC” RETREAT

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12618, 1 December 1926, Page 6

The New Zealand Times WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1926, STILL ANOTHER “STRATEGIC” RETREAT

For ail practical purposes, the British mining strike may be considered as ended. With one or two exceptions, work has been resumed in all the collieries.

It has proved a stubborn battle, with the men displaying a remarkable degree of endurance. They “stuck it” with a pertinacity worthy of a better cause. They are more entitled to sympathy than are their leaders, and “Comrade” Cook in particular. If the cabled evidence is to be trusted—and it is not always dependable—it was Cook who was primarily responsible for the fight dragging on so long. When, several months since, the men clearlv were worsted, Cook exhausted every known means to prevent them returning to the pits. Naturally, he is now at some pains preparing his defence. Publicly, or behind the doors of the unions, he may expect to be asked to justify a policy which prolonged unavailingly the miseries of the miners and their dependents. Anticipating the impeachment, Mr Cook has hastened to say that he refused to call it a defeat: “it” being the men’s surrender. He preferred to look upon it as a retreat. If by that he means one of those "strategic retreats which rent our hearts so frequently in the bad days of the war—well, the definition may pass. But it is definitely not a retreat in the modern acceptation of the term. Mr Cook knows that in his heart; the miners knew i£, too, and he knows they know it. Hence his anxiety to persuade his dupes that their wounds are merely scratches. In thus playing with euphemisms to save his own face, Mr Cook is faithfully following strike precedent. In more recent times, we cannot recall when the strike leaders admitted they were beaten, even though their .tattered banners were trailing disconsolately in the dust. Like Mr Cook, they usually strove to console their disillusioned and dispirited forces with the hope that the “next attempt” was assured of success. And when the next drive at industry was shattered, the promoters would take up their old tale and—so incredibly credulous are the masses —have it believed. Of course, the day inevitably arrives when the Cooks and their kind fall into disrepute, or are quietly or forcibly put on one side by other place-seekers. But the new industrial Napoleons are rarely, if ever, an improvement on the old: they are all painted to resemble gold. Nowadays, our Alliance of Labour has usurped the powers of the individual unions, so far as strike-making is concerned. If it doesn’t declare war, it assumes control after the declaration. And when the Alliance is soundly thrashed, it, also, resorts to the most obvious equivocation to veil its shame. All of which goes to show that when courage and sacrifice are demanded, it is the leaders, not the led, who do the shirking.