ALLIANCE OF LABOR AND LOYALTY.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 March 1922, Page 7

ALLIANCE OF LABOR AND LOYALTY.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —There has just appeared a report in the Press that when Mr. J. Roberts, secretary of the above Alliance, addressed the Auckland branch of the Post and Telegraph Association he was asked a question respecting the loyalty of the Alliance. “This question,” he said, “was promoted by opponents of the Labor movement, who ought to know better than to drag the name of the King into the mire of industrial strife. Those people certainly did not have much respect for the King when they were prepared to bring his name into questions which did not. concern him.” If this report is correct, then, for sheer humbug, this reply of Mr. J. Roberta is what we commonly call “the limit.” As artists in the line of side-stepping a straight issue the Reda are certainly adept. Why Mr. Roberts could not say right of! that his Alliance was loyal to the King and Constitution, we fail to understand, unless he had some doubt in his own mind of such being the case. The unctuously pious reference to the King, coming from a representative who hesitates to declare straight out loyalty, smacks somewhat of hypocrisy. The question of loyalty is one which no doubt will concern thinking persons in our public services, as well as other citizens, and to say that any reference to it must be promoted by opponents of the Labor movement is not merely untrue; it is a deliberate insult to the loyal citizens in the Labor movement.

In view of what is now taking place in South Africa, and the loose talk in favor of revolution circulating throughout the Empire, one can understand members of the Post and Telegraph Service asking questions as to the loyalty of an Alliance which they are being urged to join Mr. Roberts’ answer will be recognised as a shuffle. Expressing our loyalty does not involve what the Alliance secretary calls “dragging the name of the King into the mire of industrial strife.” Leaving the King’s name altogether aside, the question still

stands as to whether the Alliance affirms its loyalty to our British Constitution. Why that issue is side-stepped by Mr. Roberts, and what is behind his sophistical answer to the plain question put to him, is something the members of the Post and Telegraph Service would do well to consider.

We have publicly asserted that the Alliance of Labor is a revolutionary body, and have supplied proof of that assertion. Up till now there lias been

no official denial of that statement, nor anything published to show that we were wrong. What is going on is that the industrial and technical aims of the Alliance are being presented, but the revolutionary purpose is being kept out of sight. This may lead to the deception of many of the rank and file of our public service, and that is our reason for requesting the publication of the Alliance Constitution. —We are, etc., > N.Z. WELFARE LEAGUE.