Executive’s decisions were to all intents and purposes final. It had authority to call strikes, impose levies, and do all those things that is so frequently left to a membership vote.
This centralising of power gave to the Federation a mobility that was a source of strength. Everyone knew of the power which the Executive possessed, and also knew that there would be an unhesitating response on the part of the membership to any calls that might be made upon it.
They also knew that the Executive would not hesitate to exercise its authority should the occasion warrant it. Whilst the Executive held and exercised this power, its decisions were always fully explained to the members and, without exception, were practically unanimously endorsed.
Provision was made in the Federation’s constitution for industrial departments, but nothing was every done to establish a unionism to cover them.
One of the reasons, I believe, why there was a marked disinclination to interfere with the existing method was that there was an idea that any re-arrangement of the Federation that would interfere with the powers of the central authority would make for weakness rather than strength.
In later years in Australia when agitation was rife around the question of the O.B.U., influenced by my Federation experience, I used to argue that it was not “forms of organisation,” but “the spirit of the organisation” that really counted.
And I submit as an unanswerable argument that the nearest approach of the spirit of the One Big Union that the lands of the Southern Cross have ever seen was the N.Z. Federation of Labour. For forms of organisation, not matter how perfect the forms
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