freed those concerned from any participation in any strike or other industrial effort during the period covered.
This viewpoint was very vigorously combatted in a series of contributions by a number of correspondents in “The Maoriland Worker,” headed by myself. The view we expressed, and vigourously expressed too, was that no award or agreement, no matter what its nature, should prevent a union taking any action likely to assist its fellows in times of industrial revolt. Organised scabbery was a rock upon which organisations had been wrecked in the past, and this danger must be avoided so far as the Federation was concerned. That there was a very grave danger of concerted action being rendered impossible if the policy of the sanctity of agreements was persisted in was apparent to every observing worker, consequently those who endeavoured to uphold that point of view were assailed with an intensity that brought forth vigorous protests from them.
In a series of letters to our paper, during the course of which I quoted every authority on Industrial Unionism that I could think of, including figures which at that time loomed large upon the horizon, men of the calibre of Haywood, Debs, De Leon, etc., I concluded with the statement that the question resolved itself in the final summing up to the issue: “Loyalty to your class or loyalty to the enemies of your class.” Should that position ever arise, I urged that the Federation should “stand prepared to toss every agreement to Hell.”
What a storm I brought about my ears! And how that statement was magnified by the simple method, so dear to the hearts of certain types of
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