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Raiding the ' Ginger Group.…
Raiding the Ginger Group. I WE have had few exhibitions of the nervous- ness or the official mind more unlovely' or less excusable than that of the raid on the Cardiff meeting of the Unofficial Reform Committee of the South Wales Miners' Federation on Mon- day. If it is thought that the raiding of meet- I ings, convened by a perfectly legitimate body that has openly pursued its activities in our area over a period of years now, will in any way further the interests of the nation, then the thinker must be suffering from an ignorance that is stupendous. Trades unionists resent and rightly recent, any outside interference with their liberty to conduct their affairs from I inside their own body; and even those members l of the Federation who may regard the Ginger Group," the unofficial popular style of the Un- official lie form Committee, as a revolutionary industrial body at whose pace they do not care to travel, will resent this action of the Cardiff authorities, as an unjustifiable impertinence. They will recognise, too, that from the raiding of unofficial gatherings, to interference in official meetings is but a short step; and a recognition of that fact is by no means to be regarded as a national blessing and benefit, for the South Wales miner is very jealous about his right to conduct, his own affairs in his own way, without the kindly help of governmental or municipal authoritarianism. Nor are the presumably in- spired reasons for the raid calculated to allay the suspicion with which this action has been received. To be told that the meeting was com- posed of men mostly of military age, of whom the police were anxious to ascertain whether any were amenable for service under the Military Service Acts; is not satisfactory when it is re- collected that an enquiry would have revealed the fact that these men were underground workers; and when it is also borne in mind how ludicruously futile those carefully engineered raids of the past proved when measured by re- sults. But the Press seems to find some sort of a justification for the whole unhappy business in the fact that it was the Unofficial Reform Committee that 1 c organised the resistance to the 'comb-out' 'ballot," and that its "other purpose" is to place the control of the Federa- tion in the hands of the members, and over- throw tthe existing Executive." By the first we presume that it is intended to convey to the un- sophisticated reader an impression ihait the Un- official Reform Committee is a "pacifist" or- ganiga itio-m; but what is actually meant is that the Committee issued a circular oa the comb- out." That circular, far from being an organ- ised effort of a p,,ioi fist ao(ly intent on defeating the "comb-out," was a restrained effusion pointing out that such an effort was impossible so long as D.O.R.A. stood a.s the representative of justice in Britain; replied quickly to tl-ie at- tacks made on delegates by the Press and Exe- cutive members of the Federation; deplored the amotion of the Executive in departing from the limibartions of trade-union activity and embark- ing on controversial external questions c,aleula)ted t-o sow the seeds of dissension amongst the mem- bers of the Federation, and concluded with an appeal to the men to think carefully over the issues before marking their ballot papers. That is the organisation which is spoken of. On the other count, every sincere industrialist would welcome the activities of the Unofficial Reform Committee. The heinous erime of endeavouring to place the Federation on a truly democratic basis is one that will sit lightly on the shoulders of the delegates to the Unofficial Committee meetings and one that an unregenerate South Wales miner is more lively to condone than to condemn. If that involves the overthrow of the South Wales txeoutivean imputation which we are sure the Executive will resent—but if, as we say, the thorough democratisation of the South Wales Miners' Federation is prevented by the present Executive, then that overthrow is to be sincerely welcomed by everybody con- cerned. As a matter of fact, the whole Press conception of the "Ginger Group as a gang of modern Guy Fawkes plotters, is an imagina- tive fiction. The Ginger Group is a body of intelligent, earnest industrialists, who are con- cerned with the propagation of progressive re- forms of their own union, from the inside, and by constitutional measures. To make them the scapegoats to cover the folly of nervous officials frightened into action, by the bosh of Mr. Clem Edwards, is as ridiculous as it is inadequate as an excuse for what is an addition to the already overlong list of unwarranted interferences with the legitimate combination of men for the pur- pases of furthering- their interests as industrial- ists.
A Lead to Food Control Committess…
A Lead to Food Control Committess I WE invite the attention of every Socialist in S'mitih Wales, and in particular those members of our Trade Union and Socialist Societies who are serving on local Food Committees, or muni- cipal authorities, to the drastic, but only effec- tive methods which have been adopted by the Merthyr Food Officer, Chief-Constable Wilson, to secure more equitable, distributions of food- stuffs. There is no need to spend a lot of time demonstrating the inequality of the distribution as we have had it for some time past; the long queues that have shivered in the biting frost, or contracted influenza colds in the driving rains, have been too painfully present in every street of every town and village to need the media of words and phrases to conjure up a realisation. In most towns and villages, those queues still per- sist. But in Merthyr they ceased on Monday last, when, under the powers conferred by Lord Rhondda on him as Food Officer ths Chief-Con- stable commandeered a supply of margarine con- signed to the Maypole Company, and handed it on to other local shop keepers for distribution to consumers in half-pound pats. That is one side. Another is that of pork, on which there has been a tremendous call for some time past. Merthyr has had good supplies of pork lately, and the knowledge of it spread far and wide, with the result that residents in adjacent towns paid special, visits to Merthyr and purchased large joints, legs, and so on. This naturally re- acted upon distribution amongst those who could not afford largei joints—the poorest, the most needy were the victims now as ever. But Mr. Wilson is never wanting in courage when a duty has to be done, and he stepped in here again. By his order no legs were to be sold. All parts had to be cut up into proper roasts. The "pork" visitors have lost their habit of paying us visits. Pork queues are no logger features of our muni- cipal activity. What has been done in these two cases can be, done in all other cases, and in all other centres where there is an officer cour- ageous enough to do his duty efficiently in the interests of the people who are the nation, or where there is a committee sufficiently alive to its responsibiuities to see to it tha.t its officer acts with firmness and promptitude. Such pro- oeedure is bound to meet with the opposition of syndicated ousinesses and shopkeepers who have secured supplies at this time when supplies mean monopoly priees; and, presumably, monopoly profits; and it is important, therefore, that ail who see that so long as administration remains as it is, the policy of commandeering is the only policy containing an atom of equity, should see to it that they strengthen the hands of ofifcers seeking to do the right thing in every way they can. None can so disinterestedly do this as the Socialists and Labour members and bodies, and it is to them that we look for a widespread extension of the principle of com- mandeering supplies under the powers conferred by the Food Controller for the better distribu- tion of foodstuffs to cur people. Short of the proper socialisation of distribution, this is the only way.
Pontypridd Notes. I
Pontypridd Notes. I I I. loP. I 1. L. P. I Last Sunday evening's speaker at the I.L.P. Hall was Comrade II. Hiles, president of the Cardiff Trades Council, the subject of his ad- dress being "A Municipal Bread Supply." His exposure of the tricks of the trade in the pro- duction of the staff of life was quite a reve- lation. Owen Hughes presided and Comrades Andrews, Baker, Cox, Tom Rowlands and E. J. Williams took part in the ensuing discussion. One new member was enrolled. Trades Council. I At the last Trades Council meeting Councillor j Stonelake addressed the members of "Communal Kitchens," giving detailed figures of the Aber- dare experiments, the results of which have not jus,tified the anticipations of its promoters. Jack Andrews presided.
TO THE PEOPLE OF 41ERTHYR…
TO THE PEOPLE OF 41ERTHYR TYDFIL. I TO THE EDITOR. I Dear Sir,—At the meeting of the Borough Council on .Friday last, it was resolved to make a presentation to Corporal John Collins on his having gained the very great honour of the Victoria Cross, and I was instructed to open a fund for that purpose. I therefore appeal for gifts of money, and I trust that the response will be worthy of Merthyr's first V.C. Dona- tions will be gratefully received by me or by the Borough Controller at the Town Hall. N. F. HANKBY, I Mayor of Merthyr Tydfil. Mayor's Parlour, Town HaJI, Merthyr Tydfil. I 24th, Deoember, lS17. .I
<(A D t ?' I"A Boök:". - I
<(A D t ?' I "A Boök:" I TESS OF D' URBERVILLES-THOMAS HARDY. BY. W. G. COVE. When one has arrived at the last page of Hardy's famous novel, one has rather an un- canny feeling of the tragic irony of human life, or perhaps a poignant appreciation of the drama of the background of impersonal forces that move behind and independent of the conscious acts of his characters.. One is seized with the pessimism of the power- of a relentless mechan- ism. A cosmic mechanism that absorbs human life for its purple patches and uses men and women regardless of their moral aspirations or their intellectual purposes. There is no escape from Hardy's background. His "setting" of the novel is not merely passive, but. active; not merely for the purpose of providing a stage and local oolonr? it is the machine-dynamic of an(i larger movement of the novel. THE TRAGEDY OF THE COSMOS. I A number of women have expressed them- selves in very violent language when discussing Clare. To them, Clare- is that scamp of a modern man who, through an intellectual per- ception of the falsity of modern life, endeavours to find satisfaction in the love of a primitive woman. After this has been achieved the modern scamp himself, causes tragedy to the woman of his love by the same falsity of per- ception and action that he condemns in modern life. One cannot help but feel that moral in- dignation is out of place in any expression of opinion upon Hardy's characters. It is useless shedding tears over the destructive work of a machine, and righteous indignation will not affect its moral action?. The tragedy lies in the cosmic and if you like-the social mechan- ism. There are movements—violent revolutions —in Hardy's background, that these women have failed to see. But let us endeavour to por- tray Tess. THE CHARACTER OF TESS. I Tess is undoubtedly a tragically pathetic figure. She has potentialities for good. -She is feminely human; naturally intelligent and free from that expert sophistry and coquetry, which is the result of modern education. The tendency of her nature is towards goodness, and yet sh e is the subject of the bitter sport of forces that use this tendency of her poverty and her ultra bad and ultra good lovers. The dark,, smoulder- ing passions of the D'Urbervilles is fanned into flame by the sinister passion of Alex. She is not responsible for the bad in her. She is re- sponsible for much of the good because she con- sciously cultivates it. Yet—sand herein lies the bitterness—it is the bad for which she is least responsible, that finally helps to cause her ruin. The silly hopes and resires of her family sends her to the Stokes D'Urbervilles, where she meets Alex, a-nd it is her love for her family that drives her to grant his importunings at the last. The necessity to care for her mother and sisters br ought her to such a pass, that in a moment of sheer hopelessness, she succumbed to Alex. Tess has no system of morality to support her; no in- tellectual scheme that would assist her, even if it were possible—to straighten her sorry and crooked universe. VICTIMS. It is easy to pity Tess, but pity is no cure for ancestral obsessions and bequeathed tendencies. It is easy to be righteously indignant because of the devil's passion in Alec D'Uberville, but Alec is a victim, too, and righteous indignation is in- effective because of this fact. It is useless ignor- ing the forces that mould an Alec and a Tess, and righteous indignation does. To avert the tragedy we must understand the forces. The tragedy making movements are beyond the con- trol of Tess and Clare. They are insinuatingly impersonal in purpose and tranquilly crushing in effect. They have the pathos of the inevitable. When judged in relation to his1 upbringing, Angel Clare has the strain of a discoverer in him. He will devise his own intellectual scheme of life, and carry that scheme into operation, even when he knows that it, means being misunder stood and underrated by his parents. He is in- tellectually honest and as a result abandons Ox- ford and a career in the Church. But his intel- lectual honesty does not save him from a sugges- tion of dogmatism, and an overwhelming belief in his own pet theory of life. He has reduced what he conceives to be the highest type1 of life to a, formula. His philosophy of life made for rigidity of eha,m-cter, and robbed him of that emotional perception necessary to sympathise with imperfect men and women, and of that re- siliency of personalitv that overcomes a shock at the rebound. He strikes one as being preeo7 cious. He arrives at that stage when life has lost its charm and interest due to its flux and variety, almost 'oefoæhe reaches the age of manhood. He has no faith in the life of those around him, and he turns passionately to' an abstraction for satisfaction. The embodiment and the expression of that abstraction in tangible human form becomes the purpose of his life. THE SOCIALIST. The abstraction that has fascinated: him is the purity and idealism of nature—nature untainted by the ways and thoughts of men. He conceives of life as essentially a pure and unsullied thing, and it is. only bad and unworthy when' exhibited by man in his modern social relations. Divorced from the entangling relationships of politics, re- ligion and trade, Man is capable of realising a perfect identity with the pure and tranquil life of nature. His ideal is the knight errant of rus- ticity. His man with the hoe" has no clay on his feet. He thinks in terms of golden sun- sets, radiant dawns, ripening harvests. In his mind the country yokel and the village wench have become the highest creations of Pan. He loved Tess because he believed her to be a proof in the flesh of his pet theory. Tess was to him the loveliest flower that grew in that well or- dered garden conceived in his brain. No weeds grew there. He had mentally uprooted them. She MUST be pure because his scheme of things demanded that she should be pure. If she were not, then nature at her source was corrupt. When the revelation of the taint in Tess came, he was bitter, but it was the bitterness of a man whose whole scheme of life had been wrecked. The revelation was not merely a revelation of a weakness in Tess, but also a revelation of a weakness in the principles of life which had been accepted by him as infallible. If Tess was im- pure, then all nature was impure. His theory had blinded him to the relativity of truth; robbed him of that emotional and imaginative perception which sees a tendency apart from dis- turbing incidents, and prevented him from re- taining his mental poise in the time of crisis. "The best laid schemes of mice and men Gang aft agley, and leave us nought But grief and pain for promised joy."
The Case of Harry IThomas,…
The Case of Harry Thomas, C.O. LAW LORDS ALLOW APPEAL IN CELE- BRATED MERTHYR CASE. LORD READING'S JUDGMENT. Owing to the temporary disorganisation of the postal traffic last week—due to the holiday rush or some other cause, we were not able to receive the .full judgment in the case of Wilson v. Henry Thomas, in time for publication in that issue; but so important was the judgment of the Merthyr Stipendiary in this celebrated case of a conscientious objector, that we have no hesitation in now giving the judgment in full. It will loe. remembered that Henry Thomas a local C.O., and ex-university student, was sent home, without explanation, from the Princetown Work Com re, and was afterwards charged with being an absentee under the MilitJary Service Acts. The Stipendiary, before whom the case Was brought, held that under the terms of a letter from the Central Tribunal, and his subse- quent ac,cerprtance of work under the Alternative Service Scheme, Thomas had ceased to be amen- able to army discipline, and was not, in fact, a deserter. The summons was dismissed in a fine judgment that was published all over the coun- try, and was the subject of questions in the House, öf Commons. The military authorities asked that a case should be stated to go to ap- peal, and the appeal was heard in the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, last Weddnesdiay week, .before the Lord Chief Justice of England (Lord Reading), Ml". Justice Lawrence and Mr. Justice Shearman. THE JUDGMENT. The Lord Chief Justice in his judgment said: The sole question in this case is w hether or not the Magistrate was right in rejecting certain evidence which was tendered. The Respondent was a pea-son subject to the Military Service Acts. He raised the point, as a ground of ob- jection that he was a conscientious objector. Eventually the matter was dealt with by the Central Tribunal in Westminster under a letter of the 24th August, 1916, which dealt with the matter after it had been sent to this Tribunal by the Army Council. That letter stated that this man was transferred to Section W of the Army Reserve, whereupon he would cease to be subject to military discipline and the Army Act, and also to draw pay from Army funds, and that if he failed to comply with the conditions laid down by the Comrnittee. he would then have to undergo the sentence of imprisonment passed upon him and at the termination of his sentence he would be recalled from Section W of the Army Reserve and returned to his unit when he would again be subject to military discipline. Now I read that for the moment, without having to decide anything in law with regard to it which does not arise here, as meaning that as long as he conformed to- the conditions laid down he would remain in Section W of the Reserve, and would not be called to the Colours or other- wise rendered amenable to military discipline. in June, ,1917, he" was charged under the Mili- tary ServIee Aots with being an absentee on the 25th May. It appears he relied upon the letter of the 24th August, to which I have re- ferred as in effect a certificate exempting hisi so long as that conditional exemption was effec- tive from military discipline. A GOOD ANSWER. The Magistrate came to the conclusion in June, 1917, that that was a good answer and decided that the man was not an absentee, but ordered him to be discharged. In September of 1917, a, fresh summons was taken out against him charging him with being an absentee on the 2nd July, 1917, and the learned magistrate upon the hearing of the information, ruled on behalf of the Respondent that the pIela of res judicata, or as it would be here, autre-fois acquit, was an answer to the case, and conse- quently he refused to admit eertain oral evi- dence which was tendered on hehalf of the pro- secution, of which no particulars are stated i. the case, and he refused to admit certain docu- ments which were tendered. The resolve not to admit this evidence was based on his ruling that the information then before him was a matter to which the plea of autre-fois acquit was a complete answer. The. difficulty that I apecing with the magistrate is that the charge before him was of being an absentee on the 2nd July whereas the charge on which he had adjudicated on the 19th June, was for being an absentee on the 25th May. It does not necessarily follow that the, acquittal in June must result in an acquittal in September. STRUCK Tpo SOON. It may be there are. points that would justify a different conclusion. I express no opinion upon them because I do not think in the way the case is stafted we are in a sufficient condition to express any opinion which would be of value. The learned Magistrate has in my opinion struck too soon. I do not mean by that to say that he would have been wrong if he had arri ved at the conclusion, that the summons must be dismissed. That must depend on the conclulsion a,t which he arrives after hearing the case out. What I have decided is that he was wrong in concluding he ought not to consider the evidence, and that therefore he ought, to reject evidence relating to the offence charged as committed on the 2nd of July, because in his opinion it was the same offence. It waSs not the same, offence, though it was an offence of the same character. The answer to this case depends on whether or not the plea of autre-fois acquit would have been a good plea. In my judgment one has only to bear in mind the difference of dates to see the technical answer, or the substantial answer, and it might well be when the Magistrate has heard, all the evidence he may say, in substance this is the same case as was before me in June, and I am going to arrive at the same conclusion. Then he would be, perfectly right. But in my judgment he is not right in saying he excludes evidence which according to his statement of any fact which had been put in evidence, or might have been put in evidence, at the previous hearing of the 19th June. For these reasons I think this appeal must be allowed, and the case remitted to the magistrate for trial. Mr. Justice Lawrence: I am of the same opinion. I do not think it is necessary to add anything to the judgment of my Lord. Mr. Justice Shearman: I agree, and have nothing to add. The Lord Chief Justice: It will be allowed with costs.
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