LABOUR NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 37, 13 February 1937, Page 21

LABOUR NOTES.

UNION ACTIVITIES. T7NION MEETINGS FOR THE WEEK. (By INDUSTRIAL TRAMP.) TJNION MEETINGS FOR THE WEEK. Mond.l7, February 15.—Hairdressers. Cutters ami Pressors, Butchers, Furniture Trades. Tuesday, February 16.—Plumbers' Executive, Bacon Curers. Wednesday, February 17.—Brush nnd Broom Workers, Tram-svaymen (a.m. anil p.m.). Thursday, February 18.—Boilermakers. I COMMUNISTS AND LABOUR. The Communist party of Australia has decided in Xew South Wales to apply for affiliation with the Australian labour party, The Easter conference of the A.L.P. will consider the overture which, according to the general secretary of the A.L.P., is certain to be rejected. The Communist party suggests that a united front of both organisations could secure mass action against the Lyons Government at the forthcoming Federal elections, but no pledge is given that Communist candidates will jiot be run. The right is reserved to campaign for a Soviet Australia. MINISTERIAL ACTIVITY. The members of the Xcw Zealand Labour Government, although in office now for a little over a year, are still active in their efforts to acquire personal knowledge of details connected with their respective Departments. The general custom of Cabinet Ministers in the past has .been to trust largely to the routine knowledge of the heads of their Departments and shape their course accordingly, with the result that although .Ministers may come and go the policy of the Department goes on uninterruptedly. But with Labour Ministers all this is altered. Xo sooner were the members of the new Labour Government sworn in than each, almost within an hour, went straight to his office and started to make himself familiar with the administrative work of his officials. And this notwithstanding that it was the Christinas month. And this activity has never been let up. Immediately an exhaustive parliamentary session was ended each Minister l>cgan a tour of €ie Dominion to help him in obtaining first-hand knowledge of his work. He co-opted certain Labour M.P.'s to aid him in collecting -this information with great success. Many keen and observant critics outside the Labour party have had to admit that they have never before had to do with Ministers who have shown such an intimate knowledge of the details of the operations of their own Departments. This has been shown when deputations on many and various subjects have interviewed a Minister. The Hon. F. Langstoue for the last month has 'been travelling through the Auckland Province, visiting localities where a Minister has never been before. He has obtained first-hand knowledge and published it, too, of the deplorable tions of the Maoris at Te Hapua. with" its arid and sandy wastes. He will not need to "call for reports" on the question ; he knows. This'•'week'l'waV one of a p'Wty thataccompanied the Minister of Lands on a tour of inspection of the reserves in the Waitakere Ranges. He was attended by four or five of his heads of departments and engineers, while the City Council's engineers, both of whom know the ranges as well as they do the city parks, were also in attendance. We had reached one of the high points, about 1200 ft above sea level, and the valleys and ridges lay below us spread out like n panorama, with the blue Tasmaii out towards the west. The Minister drew a map from his pocket and pointed out in the distance where one's property finished and another started and where it ended. As one of the local experts Mid: "Ho knows the details as intimately as do we who have travelled through the district for years." . The Minister had studied the details and was in readiness for the tour. He was also able, to see .for himself the wholesale destruction of our valuable forest trees, for tho party was compelled to wait on one road until a fallen monster of the forest was hauled across the road 1)V a powerful log-hauler. This log, which was a growing sapling when Captain Cook was sailing round our coasts in the Endeavour about 1770, had been dragged out of an almost inaccessible gully and was now on its slow hut sure way to the sawmill, crushing the undergrowth in its track. And what is true of Mr. Langstone applies to the other Ministers also. Having set forth their policy, they immediately assimilate the details, acquiring them firsthand.

LABOUR ARMS POLICY. Talking of the "very real" danger of war in Europe, Mr. Hugh Dalton, chairman of the Labour party executive, said at Leeds:— "If Labour were, in power I am not going to say that we should be in favour of scrapping arms and armaments. We should need to be strong enough to make any would-be aggressors think twice." German} , , most of all, and, to a lesser extent,- Italy, were making armaments at a rate unparalleled in times of peace, said Mr. Dalton. German armaments to-day were causing every Socialist State and every democracy on the Continent of Europe to tremble. Fear of Hitler's intentions was everywhere; even the Swiss, for the first time in their history, were building fortifications on their German frontier. "We blind ourselves to reality unless ■we face this fact—that this enormous war machine, with an enormous air fleet which could destroy our great cities ill a night, is not guided by pacifists. If this "country were completely ' without arms Hitler would do to us what he lias done to Socialists, Communists and Jews. "Italy, encouraged by being allowed to take Abyssinia, is inclined to move alongside Germany to form a great Fascist united front against the rest of Europe." The only hope for the future was a strong League of Nations. Two of the most effective lines of attack in dealing with the unemployment problem, added Mr. Dalton, were the raisins of the school leaving age from 14 to IG, with maintenance allowances, and the provision of retiring pensions for older workers in industry.