Trade Unions and U.N.O.
A matter of the highest constitutional importance, which strikes at the very root of the fundamental conceptions on which the United Nations Charter is based, arose in Tuesday morning's meeting of the General Committee of the Assembly. The General Committee had before it a request, contained in a letter from M. Louis Saillant, Secretary-General of the World Federation of Trades Unions, asking for representation of the W.F.T.U. "in a consultative capacity "- whatever that may mean—in the United Nations General Assembly, and for "full representation, with the right to vote" in the Economic and Social Council. These demands were strongly supported in the General Committee by two of the Soviet delegates, Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Kuznetsov—the latter himself a member of the W.F.T.U. executive—and by Mr. Manuilsky, the Ukrainian. But, as Mr. Peter Fraser, of New Zealand, so rightly remarked, the request poses the question of a "revolutionary change" in the constitution of the United Nations. The United Nations Charter is founded upon the conception of an association of nations, represented by their national Governments. To admit an international organisation such as the W.F.T.U. even to representation and voting rights in one of the Councils of the United Nations would be to place it on a level with sovereign States, and to give it equal powers in the taking of decisions. Labour cannot in reason claim a double representation—political and industrial. It has come into its own politically, with a Labour Government in power in a country like Great Britain, and it is by political means, not by an inadmissible claim to industrial repre- sentation in a political body, that it must seek to gain its ends. It is noteworthy that one of the strongest supporters of that doctrine in the Assembly was the head of the Labour Government in New Zealand.
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