Page:Scott Nearing - British Labor Bids for Power (1926).pdf/13

 

"We have watched with much interest the struggles of the Indian workers in seeking to improve their political and industrial status. We have noted the steady growth of their Trade Union Movement and the demand of the Indian Trades Union Congress for the power to be extended to their Trade Union Movement to dispose of their funds as they please, a power denied them under the Indian Trade Union Bill. The British movement joins with them in demanding political freedom and the right of self-determination, voiced in this country on many occasions, along with a measure of franchise covering a large number of people of the depressed classes and of factory workers. We support them in their fight for the fullest right to organise in Trade Unions, and of the industrial workers to develop their trades organisation to enable them to bargain with their employers upon a basis of equality. The conditions under which the workers of India are employed call for the goodwill and hearty support of all their efforts for improvement. The wages paid to textile workers, miners, railwaymen, and other industrial workers, with their long hours of labour, have been voiced at our Congresses for some years, and are admitted to be a disgrace to any responsible Government or body of employers. We must help them to demand the right of combination and such measures as their representatives consider necessary as they work their way from the present slavish conditions to a higher standard of life. In recent years our mechanics have been busy manufacturing machinery for the textile factories of India, and the capitalists, who know no country, have used British made machinery and British capital and British management, which under-cut our Lancashire producers, and then quite calmly talk of being unable to compete with the 'foreign labour' and lower standards of India. In the interest of our own industrial workers we must help in any and every direction the Indian workers in their political and industrial struggles. 



"The whole British Trade Union Movement must rejoice at the revolt of the Chinese workers against the degrading conditions which have been made public during the past few months. There appears to be a repetition of the methods used in Great Britain by the employers over 100 years ago, when the workhouses were the recruiting ground for cheap labour, by the employment of little children. The whole