NEW LANG "PLAN."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 31, 7 February 1933, Page 11

NEW LANG "PLAN."

TO SOCIALISE CREDIT.

LABOUR ENTHUSIASM.

PREMIER A SEVERE CRITIC.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, February 2,

Two or three weeks ago the outlook For the Langites in either State or Federal politics seemed gloomy in the extreme. The Socialisation party had organised their forces against tfie Graves-Garden-Keller clique at the rrades Hall, and the preliminary ballot seemed to indicate that the ascendancy :>f the little junta which has so long lictated the Labour policy of this State had really come to an end at last. But the old campaigners were too much for the young reformers. On the pretext that certain votes had been given or recorded informally, the Gfarden-Graves party suceeded in upsetting several of the ballots, and before the Socialisation units had recovered from their surprise they were badly beaten, and Graves and Garden control the Langite executive once more. But though the situation is much brighter for Mr. Lang in Sydney than it was a month ago, any that he may have cherished of carrying the A..W.U. country convention with him iast week must soon have vanished. For it the Katoomba gathering, while the recognised leaders of the A.W.U. emphasised the need for unity in the party and expressed tho wish that the breaches which divide it might soon be healed, they macje it perfectly clear that they have not forgiven Mr. Lang, and that they will not make any concession to him or his party, x Mr. Lang's Bold Appeal. But Mr. Lang was by no means daunted. There is something about Mr. Lang—a sort of brazen hardihood— which in a better type of man might be admired as courage; and certainly he lias an amazing amount of confidence in himself and his own plans and projects. He feels safer, now that he has the new executive at the Trades Hall and the rank and file of the State Labour party solidly behind him; he knows that while he can never hope to unseat Mr. Seullin and lead the Federal Labour party, unless he consents to some sort of compromise, yet "the unity Labour" is no loss necessary and desirable to his opponents than to him; and so he has determined to take a bold course and in defiance of the A.L.P. and the A.W.U., once more to submit a. policy for the workers of Australia to adopt and uphold. This week another Labour gathering—the State A.L.P. conference at Goulburn —gave him his opportunity, and, attended by a strong body of adherents, he went there to deliver a new Langite gospel for the edification of all true believers. Mr. Lang's speech might be briefly summarised under two lieads---th<2 socialisation of credit and the unification of Australia. Much "of the speech was taken up with the familiar claptrap about the evil power of gold and the tyranny exercised over the rest of the world by "a dozen individuals living in European and American capitals. The remedy obviously is the control of the Money Power by Labour, and thus we fet to the socialisation of credit as the "remedy, for all the ills of life. There is nothing new about this—the plan, so far as it has any definite shape or form, is much on the lines of Mr. Theodore's State bank proposals; indeed, Mr. Theodore, commenting on the speech, has remarked dryly that Mr. Lan<* "never could think for himself. But°to his followers it represents a step in the direction of that absolute control of wealth which all true Marxians desire; and for the Langites it possesses the further advantage that it robs the advocates of Socialisation who arc just now Lang's bitter foes—of the most important "plank" in their platform. So the State A.L.P. has received this new gospel with enthusiasm, and its proposals were hailed with delight as embodying "the new Federal Labour policy for the next Federal elections. "Socialisation." Of course, Mr. Lang's speech, crude and ill-digested as it was, lent itself eaoilv to attack and criticism. Mr. Stevens began by charging the State Labour machine and its leader "with abject surrender to the Communist influences that have dominated its policy so lop®But the Premier saw that something more than mere denunciation would be needed to counteract the impression that Mr. Lang had evidently produced, and in a second public statement he subjected Mr. Lang's proposals to more detailed analysis and criticism. He reminded the electors how the* small measure of "socialisation which Langites had been able to apply during their term of office had ruined the public services, annihilated the savings, and brought the State to the very 'brink of destruction. He showed too that the plea for unification involving the abolition of local legislatutea and the transfer of all power to a centralised despotism was merely a specious disguise for some such irresponsible tyranny as already exists in Soviet Russia, and would natuially ap peal to the imagination of would-be dictators of the Lang type. It was not difficult for Mr Stevens to pour contempt on the whole of the speech—with its cynical disregard to. truth and its attempt to foment class hatred; with its blatantly vulgar attack upon the Governor and the High Couit iud»es, and its systematic misrepresentation of the financial position, the banking system and every other matter of public interest on which it touched; and the Premier.is probably justified 111 his conviction that the people of the State "will never give Mr. Lang aiiotliei chance to Sovietise it, as he attempted during the disastrous days of his late Government." A New Party Cry. From all this it may reasonably be inferred that Mr. Lang's latest appeal for the confidence and support of the electors will make little difference tc those who already distrust and fe f r Langism and all its works. But it wilJ certainly strengthen the Langites by providing them with a comparatively new faith and a fresh party cry, and it may bring over to Lang's side some 01 the waverers who are dissatisfied with the relatively un progressive character of the Federal 'Labour policy, and may be persuaded that, as Seullin and Lyons have failed, Lang might be an improvement on them if he were transferred from Sydney to Canberra. f