Possible explanation of, the above may be found in the extraordinary circumstances of the annual meeting of the New South Wales section of the Labour party. It lasted' for a fortnight or three weeks, and finally resulted in the re-admission of Mr. J. Dooley, ex-Premier of the State, into the ranks of the ''movement,"' as it is called, the defeat of those responsible for driving him out, and the election of a brand-new executive with the secretary of the Miners' Federation at its head. The fight seems to have been between the "one big union"—the Australian Workers' Union—and the rest, but it is important to note that the "rest" only won by"a combination between the most extreme and the most moderate elements in the party. The new executive has two Communists who recently returned from attending the Third International in Moscow, and others who are avowed Communists, thought at the same time the great majority of the executive may be regarded as moderate.
By a very narrow: margin it was formally decided to re-admit all expelled Communists to the party. But what was most remarkable was the establishment beyond question of the fact that there were in official positions in the party men who manufactured special ballot boxes, so that voting could be faked by the insertion of -votes through a sliding panel after the boxes themselves had been sealed; also that men were kept to go round the voting place under false names, with false identification cards, to vote as often as possible for (some particular name. As one delegate declared, the whole Labour organization was seething with corruption, and many resolutions were passed demanding that there be a cleaning of the stable. Consequently, when we find the miners behaving idiotically, under instructions from their so-called leaders, we naturally begin to ask ourselves if those leaders know anything about what one delegate succinctly summed up as faked ballot boxes, faked pence coeds and faked voting. It is about seven years ago that the ex-Prime Minister, then Labour leader, warned the unions that certain foreign parasites were fastening themselves on to the movement, -and would destroy it. The attacks upon the Federal Government, and especially the Prime Minister, come mostly from members of the New South Wales Labour party, just arrived from attend: ing the Conference, and seeking some means to divert attention from the shocking exposure.
TWO 'TROUBLE-MAKERS, Having failed to have declared unconstitutional the law under which they were called upon to show cause why they should not be deported, the emissaries of De Valera have been by no means disposed of. It seems as if, there being no room for them to cause trouble in Ireland, -they must cause it somewhere, and Australia is to be the corpus vile. After prolonged hearings before a Board, the members of which they deliberately and methodically personally insulted, it has been recommended that they be deported. This would seem the end, but now the extremists of the Labour party step in. They demand that Flanagan and Kelly be tried by a jury, though there is no law under which this could be done. If, say the leaders of the Labour unions, an attempt is made to deport, these men, before such a trial has been held, then they will call out the crews of the ship concerned. Once during the war.we had a similar case, the Labour leaders seeking to prevent the deporation of certain Germans. The matter was settled by getting a steamer away to sea and putting the de-portoes aboard when the crew, even had they wanted to, could not desert. Probably the Federal Government will follow a somewhat similar course. In the previous case mentioned an attempt was even made to rescue, and a lawyer accompanied the ship to Colombo to try and defeat the authorities. The Prime Minister -then was Mr. Hughes, and there was nothing vindictive about him, once he gained his own ends. Consequently, what was really a serious offence against the Crown was condoned. But that was all under the War Precautions Act. Now that Act is no more, and if the Government is to be thwarted the precedent will practically stand for all time. It will be in-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.