A LONE FIGHT

Gisborne Times, Volume LXV, Issue 10312, 22 January 1927, Page 7

A LONE FIGHT

“BUT WE WERE NOT ABANDONED BY WORKERS.” GENERAL COUNCIL LEADING MINERS INTO OPEN TRAP. MEN REFUSED TO BE CAUGHT. MINERS’ FEDERATION STATEMENT UN STRIJvE. (United Press Assn.—Copyright.) LONDON, Jan. 21. “If we were deserted and forced to fight a lone fight, it was not by the workers that we were abandoned.” This sentence at the outset is characteristic of a strongly-worded statement by the Miners’ Federation on the general strike for a conference of the Trade Union executives.

The statement declares that the general strike was the climax of concerted endeavors on the part of the employers for years to solve their problem by wage cutting, in- 1925 it was narrowed to the mining industry, with its special difficulties. The first attempt at a general wages reduction in July, 1925, was defeated because the Labor movement, under the then strong determined leadership of the Trades’- Union Council, stood by the miners, and the Government, which backed the coalowners, was compelled to postpone the conflict and take time to load its guns.

The real purpose of the Royal Commission thereafter appointed, the statement adds, was to find an argument! which divided the united front of the whole movement. The Council which in February, 1926, reaffirmed the solidarity of the miners and other trade unionists, hesitated six months later, after the publication of the Commission’s report, to reaffirm the position on which it had committed the whole movement. Thus the workers entered the general strike unaware that the Trades Union Council contemplated yielding. Having decided on a policy of yielding, they yielded consistently until the end. Summing • up a lengthy argument in defence of the miners’ rejection of the Samuel memorandum, the statement declares: “To put it bluntly the General Council were leading the miners into a trap, but tho miners refused to ho entrapped.” The statement concludes: “The fight is. not over. Longer hours and lower wages cannot bring peace in the coalfields. We will not allow district agreements to shatter our strength. The unity of our organisation is still intact. We arc determined to recover the lost ground, and look confidently to the "support of the whole trade union movement.”