STRIKES AGAINST WAR EVERY autumn two great Parliaments of Labour
meet in succession—the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party Conference. They are not always in Complete harmony, and last year they disagreed over a very important issue. The congress rejected the policy of trying to stop any and every war by organizing a general strike against it. The conference, swayed by Sir Stafford Cripps's friends of the Socialist League, adopted this among a number of policies favoured by the extremists.
For Labour's political body to prescribe a course of trade union action, which its trade union body had already declared itself against, could only be a gesture. The task of agreeing on a policy remained. After many months' discussion the basis of a concordat has been drawn up. The triple Joint Council, on which represen- tatives of the Trades Union Council, the Labour Party Executive, and the Labour Members of Parliament, sit together, has approved the text. It will be submitted to the congress and the conference this coming autumn.
It rejects the idea of stopping war by a strike. The essential argument against it at the Trades Union Congress last year was that the responsibility for stopping war ought not to be placed on the trade union movement. The ablest trade union chiefs objected to seeing their organization used, like the monkey's paw, to draw the chestnuts out of the fire for everybody else. The new statement adopts their contention, adding that " every citizen who wants peace and every other section of the Labour movement must share the responsibility of organ- ized action against war."
But it goes much further, and in an extended discussion of the different' aspects which war may wear show, by implication, where the idea of the anti-war strike funda- Mentally faN. It fails because it rests on an atomic conception of international relations, which does not correspond to contemporary facts. All that such a strike can hope to do is to prevent our own country from carrying on war. It can do nothing to prevent the occurrence of war elsewhere in the world. For that there is needed positive and constructive action, such as may be developed under the League of Nations and the Kellogg Pact. No Power upon earth is by inclination and situation so well fitted to take a leading part in this development as Great Britain ; and it would be a disaster If her weight in the councils of nations were diminished by a general conscious- ness that she alone among Great Powers could not in any circumstances support naval or military action. For here let us note that a serious strike against war, though not excluded on paper in France or -the United States, would stand no practical chance in either of those coun- tries ; while in Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia it is inconceivable, -even on paper,• since no trade union or- ganization capable of acting against the State is allowed in any of them to exist.
Accordingly the statement draws as explicit a distinction as possible between war of aggression and- war under- taken in defence of the collective peace system. This distinction, as we have often urged, is absolutely vital, if there is to be a collective peace system 'at all. People like Lord Beaverbrook, who do not believe in one or want one, are logical enough in wishing to deny the use of a single -British soldier or sailor in the League's behalf. Theirs is- a doctrine of extreme national individualism and, if you will, national selfishness. For Labour, which has been accustomed for a century to claim an inter- national outlook, it would really he apostasy to throw its weight into Lord Bea verbrook's scale. Yet that is what in effect it would have done, if it had adhered to the policy of a general strike against war in all circumstances. It is satisfactory to see instead so sane an approach to the problem as is outlined in the new statement, recog- nizing frankly that the day of blind individualism is over as between nations, no less than as between the units which compose each of them.
The idea of a general strike against war may be criticized on other grounds. It may be asked, who are the trade union officials, that they should dictate a national decision ? They are not elected by the nation, but by a minority within it ; and they are not elected even by that minority to determine questions of foreign diplomacy, but to negotiate about wages, hours, and conditions of employment in their various industries at home. These are, in theory, unanswerable objections, and they do not apply in regard to peace and war only, but also to any high question of national policy, in which the representatives of a minority might try to dictate. Nevertheless, those who are intent upon abolishing war might be inclined to waive them here, if this was a practical means to that end. But since in fact no British Government would dare to declare war unless it already had the mass of the people behind it, any such trade union action would be ineffectual.
And what then about the individual who " strikes " against war—the supporter of the Oxford Union's resolution, who will not fight " for King and Country "? Some who voted for that resolution have said since that they did not mean thereby to declare themselves un- willing to fight in defence of the collective peace system. Others, no doubt, will carry their refusal to fight into any and every war. To them Great Britain may always be expected, as in the Great War, to grant exemptions for conscience' sake. Though we were the only nation in Europe to adopt that course in 1914-18, it was not merely the only course consistent with our idea of civilization and our conception of the rights of the individual, but it was a very wise one even from the standpoint of the military authorities. It meant the automatic elimina- tion from the fighting ranks of elements which in the Austrian and German and other Continental armies became eventually sources of great weakness. Their attitude represents a way of seeking to bring about peace, which, laudable in intention, is likely to prove barren of results. There are, in broad distinction, two ways towards the goal—a negative and a positive—and only the positive way holds hope for today and tomorrow. Those who pursue the former may weaken the voice of those who pursue more constructive methods in the common councils of the world. Though members cf the Labour Party have no special claim to pose as the only group which puts- a policy of peace in the forefront of its programme, it is all to the good that the Party should both refrain 'from pacifist gestures implying ineffectual sectional action, and also take its stand on the side of progressive national disarmament and collective peace.
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