It is natural to ask how all this come about. How is it that with nearly. 1,5000,000 work. ers employed, with' wages low, and with a Conservative Government in power organized Labour should fee! fo sure of itself and so confident of its capacity to challenge the employers to a vital contest? (There was twice as much money, about 1921, yet organized Labour collapsed and every great industry subsequently suffered drastic wage The answer is simple. For four years the workers of Great Britain have been subjected to. intensive Left-wing Labour propaganda and it has carried before it. Communism as an "i has never figured in the campaign. Not one worker in a thousand could define that much-used term. Its oficial exponents in Great Britain, with few excenti not taken seriously. For al ted oFthodoxy they are poor friends to Russia. compared to the popular Left-wing leaders like Lansbury and Pareell, These astute leaders "have accurately fathomed the British workers antipathy to "isms" every kind. They have ousted the Henderson-Clynes-Barnes type of leader form the affections of the workers and given the British trade union movement its it revolutionary tinge. They prophesied that the defeat of the miners in 1921 would usher in wage reductions for all the other workers, and they prdphesised right. They backed the idea of the Trade Union Delegation to Russia and have successfully persuaded the British worker that the adoption of the Soviet system to the Rui worker all that the workers of all countries are fighting for—security, power, and wealth.
The United Front has always been A campaign was initiated every trade union leader:
jed to resist the "United Front." Such men were pilloried as being more afraid to lose their Jobs than to help their members The measure Bought off "Red Friday" was what the "Daily Herald" of the following Jay christened it, and although Mr. Cook has named ick.
{t-wing Labour feels that "Black day" is now wiped clean off the slate, The blunt featured, ungainly, and capped Yorkshiremen who have excited curiosity of Londoners lately in Whitehall have taken up the challenge thrown down them and wiped the floor with their opponents. 'They have beer Vought off in the same fashion tha a weakening kingdom bought ff its more courageous enemies by Danegeld in' the past. And they have been bought off with the sume consequences. 'The victory has made them "bolder and increas their prestige. 'They will' come, Back for more, and more again. The hastily improvised alliance of rade unions has proved its effectiveress and will henceforth be a permanent feature of trade union! organization. So. have the Iseal "Councils of Action" established by the Trade Councils. All the workers the great industries that compete for trade on the world's meikews of success this campaign has had is now evident. It must even surprise the propagandists. The political wing of the British Labour movement has lost the few shreds of prestige that was left it after pitiful period of office. The MacDonalds and Snowdens were not even supers in industrial La-hour's spectacular triumph last week. "Direct Action" has given them' their Waterloo. The workers are now convinced that it is only the Reds that can deliver the goods.
A secondary cause for the remark. able unanimity of the delegates at the alliance conference was Mr. Baldwin'
habit of thinking aloud When Mr. Cook interviewed him and asked if the wage proposals of the _mineowners were fair, Mr. Baldwin replied that not only the miners, but all the rest of the workers. must anticipate wage reductions This might have been good reasoning, but on the eve of a conference of delegates from all unions it was distinctly bad tactics and Mr. Cook exploited it to the utmost. As the "Observer," said: "The trade unions. were resolute to fight as a coherent mass rather than run the risk of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.