The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-07-31 00:00:00

THE TRADES UNION CONGRESS.

tI the preliminary notice just issued of the nine-
teenth Annual Trades Union Congress, to be held in
Hull, on Monday, September 6th, and five following
days; he Parliamentary Committee and the Hull
Trt.des and Labour Council, addressing the officers of
trade societies and trades councils, state, amongst
other matters, the following "We need scarcely add
that the increasing complications of our industrial
life, the portentous questions awaiting settlement,
render it absolutely necessary that the working people
of the Kingdom shotild, as the result of careful
deliberation, arrive at a common agreement upon all
subjects involving their general welfare. This can
best be obtained by association and mutual interchange
of opinion, which is the great object our Congresses are
intended to secure. Before our assembling in Sr ptemlyir
next a new Parliament will be in power. It i 3 there-
fore the duty of every society to send delegates to the
Congress in order to make it powerfully representa-
tivo, by which alone it can give due authority and
,force to the decisions arrived at, as well as afford to
,labour the protection which from day to day we
realise as being more imperatively needed." In the.
, appeals just issued to the societies by the Parliament-
ary Committee for funds "to continue the work
already successfully initiated," and signed "J. Mawds-
ley, chairman; A. W. Bailey, vice-chairman; J. Bur-
nett, treasurer; George Shipton, secretary pro. tern.;"
and by the other members of the Committee, the fol-
lowing passage occurs: 'There ia not a trade society
in the kingdom, whether represented at the Congress
or not, that should be allowed to rest until it has been
aroused to a sense of its moral obligation towards those
whose struggles and privations have won enormous
benefits in which the onlookers so readily participate?
And then this question is asked: "Where would be
the cause of working people now if this inert attitude '
had been observed by those societies which have borne '
the brunt and heat of the day—by those members of '
our societies who have suffered unjust imprisonment
and other sacrifices, in order to remove the penal enact-
ments from which, in future, others are happily
exempt ?" The document concludes as follows: "Let
the industrial population endeavour to realise what
would be their condition if no Parliamentary Com-
mittee existed—no active trades societies, or trades'
councils—willing to labour and to pay for advancing'
the common good. What would be the surroundingsi
of the workmen's homes—th 9 workshops and factories,
the wages, the hours of labour, and a thousand other
influences which so largely decide whether our daily
existence shall be one of fair contentment, or one of
misery. If this idea is only imperfectly realised,
surely the powerfully organized trades of the United
Kingdom, exemplifying as they dos disciplined army
of toilers unique among the labour movements of the
world, will no longer place their Parliamentary Com-
mittee in the semi-humiliating position of making
constant appeals for funds which should be readily
forthcoming on the merit of good work accomplished
in the cause of industrial elevation."