Page:Scott Nearing - World Labor Unity (1926).pdf/28

 Rank and file meetings all over Europe are acclaiming World Labor Unity. Resolutions are being passed and circulated. The responsible leaders of the working class in many countries are speaking in no uncertain terms in favor of action.

At the labor conference held in Paris July 4–5, 1925, Liebaers, Secretary of the Belgian Garment Workers Union, said to the 2,470 delegates: "Workers of France! You are faced with this alternative from which there is no escape. You will either pay dearly for the error of your divided forces, and will allow still heavier chains to be loaded upon you. Or else, by Trade Union Unity, you will be able first to stop the criminal war in Morocco, and then to forge the weapon which the workers need for their final emancipation."

Speaking to 630 delegates at a conference at Battersea, London, on January 80, 1925, A. J. Cook, Secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, said: "Comrades, we are at the crossroads. Either we have to re-organize our trade unions into real live fighting organizations on behalf of the down-trodden working classes, or be content to allow them to be simply a medium for co-operating with and stabilizing capitalism, with the resulting enslavement of the working classes.

"The steps to be taken to obtain a united working-class front are:—

(1) Organization by industry;

(2) Every industry to be linked up nationally and internationally; and

(8) Every struggle, either offensive or defensive, to be fought nationally or internationally."

Purcell, President of the British Trades Union Congress during 1924, head of the British Delegation to Russia, and President of the I.F.T.U., declares, in an article on "The Burning Question of International Unity": "Unorganized coolie labor abroad will force us, is now forcing us, to coolie labor at home. …

"One way there is, and one only, by which improvements can be achieved. That is, by everywhere building up a strong trade union movement and by fighting for trade union conditions throughout the world.

"By what means can we achieve this object? By the creation of a single fighting Trade Union International. … It must be able to carry out a militant policy for the emancipation of the working class in all countries."