LABOUR RALLY

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 259, 2 November 1925, Page 8

LABOUR RALLY

STRAND THEATRE MEETING. Mr. R. F. Way (Labour candidate for Parnell) and Mr. J. A. Lee (Auckland East), were the speakers at a rally in the Strand Theatre last evening, and received an enthusiastic hearing from a crowded audience. In a vigorous fighting speech, Jlr. Way roundly condemned the manner in which the flag of the country was being degraded and debased for propaganda purposes by his opponents. There had been a lot of talk about loyalty and very little politics from the ranks of Reform, but dragging the flag in tho dirt of a political scrap was not likely to inculcate love for the national emblem which was never the monopoly of any class in the community when it came to fighting and dying for it. (Applause.) Mr. Way said ho noted that Mr. Bollard's picture had been dropped from the flag poster. Was it an omen that the Minister of "Infernal" Affairs, who safeguarded us from the bombs and infernal machines of the Bolsheviks, would be rejected in Raglan?

Reform with its poverty-stricken record of 14 years' misgovemment of tlie country in the interests of the privileged and wealthy classes could only start up silly season scares, instead of submitting a constructive policy to the intelligence of the electors. To say that the Labour Party in its attack on landlordism and land monopoly was out to steal the people's homes was a stupid invention which would not deceive a school child. Their opponents had blamed depression in New Zealand on the "go-slow" policy of Labour, but they had stuffed the Upper House with aged party hacks who worked for 5 hours 33 minutes in the strenuous month of August, and cost the country £30,000 a year. While tho basic wage was so low there should be no talk of raising members' salaries in the legislature. The cry of "Safety First" and financial stability came with a strange sound from a Government whose last loan of seven millions in London was left for the underwriters to nurse, and that brilliant Minister of Finance, the Hon. Mr. Nosworthy, was now trying to mop up a loan of five millions locally because London was shy. Yet recently when Queensland's Labour Government sought twelve millions there they were offered over fifty millions on the spot. Mr. Way said the only salvation for the workers on the land and the workers in the towns lay in returning a Government which would fight the battle of Cue people regardless of vested interests and unchecked profiteering.