The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 1932. THE PUBLIC SAFETY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 93, 20 April 1932, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 1932. THE PUBLIC SAFETY.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs tvsistanoe, For the future in fhe distance, And the yood that we can do.

Nobody likes to see introduced such a Bill for the preservation of law and order as the Government has framed, just as nobody likes to take nasty medicine. Unfortunately, emergency conditions demand emergency measures. "Dora," as the body of war restrictions were called in England, may have been unpleasant, but war was infinitely nastier. All that the Government of this country asks for now is power to take certain steps in certain contingencies. It is probable that there' was nothing in the disturbances of last week that could not be dealt with under the existing law, but quite rightly the Government is taking no cbances. It is preparing for the possibility that graver situations may arise, and is determined that it shall have full emergency powers to deal with them. It should be noted that the Bill deals purely with a state of emergency, which, however, may never arise, and that proclamations issued under it shall be laid before Parliament as soon as possible. The Government has taken a proper precaution, and the Labour Party should have frankly acknowledged the need for this action.

Unfortunately, the Labour Party did not seize this fresh opportunity of offering sympathy to the Government in its unprecedented difficulties, and of showing itself disinterested, level-headed and patriotic. It opposed the Bill, and its leader referred to the power conferred on the Government to suppress meetings of its political opponents— a mean insinuation. But the party's opposition to the Bill was not one-tenth so deplorable as its remarks about the disturbances. There were attempts to excuse the rioters, to depict the riots as the protest of hungry unemployed, to blame the Government for what had happened, and generally to make political capital out of the most disgraceful outburst of savagery in our history. In this comment it is necessary for this paper to remind its readers that it has not been an uncritical supporter of the Government's unemployment and industrial policy. When we receive, as we have done, a letter from a life-long Liberal charging the Liberal Press with having acquiesced in the Government's amendment of tho arbitration system, the fact being that in these columns we protested over and over again and strongly against this legislation, it is necessary that our position should be made as clear as possible. We do not approve of this amendment. We do not think the Government has shown as much energy, or as many ideas, or as much imaginative sympathy as it might have done in its handling of unemployment. But large numbers of New Zealanders who agree with us in this will deplore the attitude of the Labour Party in yesterday's debate —its irresponsibility in the face of grave events, its ignoring of facts, its lack of moral courage. Consider some of the statements. Mr. Lee referred to the absence of premeditation; he had never seen a more orderly procession than the one in which he took part. Does he not know that windows were deliberately broken before the clash occurred at the Town Hall? Does he suggest that bad fairies placed in the pockets of those responsible the necessary missiles? The suggestion that the riot was a hunger riot is also at variance with known facts. Since the police have brought participants to book in the Courts it has made plain that criminals and hooligans played a leading part in the orgy of destruction and looting. The number of persons with previous convictions who have been sentenced for participation is significant. There is, for example, the lady from Australia who was punished for inciting and looting. She had been convicted of theft ten times. Was it because her heart bled for the unemployed that she broke the law on Thursday? And if this was a hunger riot, why did not the starving rioters loot food shops instead of jewellers' and tobacconists'? Then there was Mr. Parry's references to "batons wielded by the crude and incapable organised body called special constables," and batoning men back to empty homes. What a misrepresentation of fact, and what a mean reference to men who came forward voluntarily 1 in defence of law and order! The genuine unemployed had little or nothing to do with the riots. Mr. Parry surely realises why batons were served out. It was to protect property. Would he have left the protection of Karangahape Road solely to the inadequate force of official police?

But the case against the Labour Party is wider than this. It is that the party, by refusing to face the facts of the national and world-wide economic situation, by subjecting the Government to a stream of unfair criticism and abuse, and by promising to the people what no other Government, Labour or otherwise, has been able to perform, has been a substantial factor in creating the feeling of resentment for which it blames the Government. Many of its utterances have been provocative. Last month Mr. Holland said publicly that if certain things were done by the Government, "the most dangerous hour in the history of New Zealand would have struck, and all the conditions making for industrial upheavals and insurrectionary developments would have been created by the Forbes-Coates Coalition." That he added that the avoidance of such a condition should be the concern of every sane element does not relieve Mr. Holland of responsibility for a very unfortunate utterance. But the ultimate foundation of the party's deplorable position to-day is its refusal to acknowledge what all the rest of the world is acknowledging. It has declared it can do what no other Labour Government has succeeded in doing, and too many New Zealanders have been taken in by this absurd claim. If there is to be any hope for the party it must seek the path of political honesty, and not persist in a senseless endeavour to delude the public into believing that New Zealand's economic difficulties are not a part of and inseparable from the world's tragie post-war depression-