STRONG PROTEST

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 37, 23 November 1939, Page 3

STRONG PROTEST

REFERENCE TO FARMERS’ UNION

MR SCRIMGEOUR’S ATTACK

(Special to the “Guardian.”) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day

Reference to tlic Farmers’ Union as “Public Enemy No. 3” by the Controller of Commercial Broadcasting (Mr C. G. Serimegour), in a recent broadcast, brought a strong protest from members of the executive of the North Canterbury branch of the union yesterday. A resolution deploring the attack, and expressing the fullest confidence in the- president of the union, Mr W. W. Mulholland, was carried. Farmers had offered the Government their fullest (and had undertaken to increase production, said Mr A. M. Carpenter, and he was therefore amazed to_ find that the Government, Government departments, and the broadcasting authorities were abusing the Farmers’ Union. “It is tcirible to think that wo farmers, who provide the vital finance and production of the country, should be, by Mr Serimgeour, or any other man, dubbed Public Enemy No. 3,” said Mr Carpenter. “After sacrificing ourselves to production at a time when the Empil e has its back to the wall, this abuse is intolerable. “I am sorry for the people in the towns who hear and believe this stuff, said Mr Carpenter. “They do not understand the position. I am sorry if they are taken in by this and the soft sort of slobber that goes with it. But why does he single us out? What have we done?” Mr R. G. Bishop: We are agin the Government.

Mr Carpenter said that the union simply could not allow the untruthful and unjust to go without the strongest protest. The forces appeared to be gathering against the farmer, and it was time to affirm that the union was never more united than it was today. That was true also of farmers as a whole. “We want to scotch at once the idea that the Dominion president does not speak for all farmers, and that we are not united,” he said. The following resolution was carried: “That this branch deplores such , attacks over the air as that recently delivered by the Controller of Commercial Broadcasting, Mr C. G. Scrimgeour, in which lie described tlm I’aimers’ Union as public enemy No. 3, thus seeking to divide the people at such a critical time, especially as the Farmers’ Union is co-operating fully with the Government; and that this branch fully supports the efforts of the president in protecting the interests of farmers and in seeking higher production.”