PEOPLE'S FREEDOM

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 164, 14 July 1941, Page 3

PEOPLE'S FREEDOM

POLITICAL ISSUES MR. R. M. ALGIE'S VIEWS "If my argument is correct, and I am convinced it is, then every vote cast for a Socialist party at a Parliamentary election is a vote for the destruction of free representative government in the country where | that vote is cast," said Mr. R. M. ■ ! Algie in his address at the Parnell ■ Public Library this afternoon. I There were, continued Mr. Algie, ! two separate and wholly distinct types of government, and the administrative system of every country fell into one class or the other. On the one hand, there was the democratic system in which the ultimate or final authority lay entirely with the people, who were completely free to elect their own representatives and, through them, to enact what laws and to introduce what reforms they might deem best. On the other hand, there were grouped totalitarianism, Communism and Socialism, under which the people did as they were told and their lives and activities were planned, regulated, controlled and dictated, directly or indirectly, by some non-representative individual or group, such as a fuehrer, a Fascist grand council or even a federation of trades unions. The democratic system, as understood by British peopie, operated through free, representative government. If that system was to be I maintained, three conditions, at I least, could be regarded as being absolutely essential. First, it was necessary that Parliament should be the supreme law-making body, and that it should be independent of any external control save only that of the electors themselves. In the second place, it was necessary that the people should have the power to maintain their control over the working of the Parliamentary and administrative machine and that they should at all times be able and quite unafraid to exercise that power. Finally, it was equally important that there should exist an impartial independent and fearless judiciary' supreme in its own sphere and untroubled by rival political or mini-' stenal tribunals. It must also be fully empowered to pass judgments in disputes involving the existence y rights and certain that its .Hielements would be enforced even if they affected the State itself. "Take away one or more of these three great props of our Parliamentary system." said the speaker, "and that system will remain standing ?." • ~'.' 1S capable of maintaining its eouilibnum under conditions not usually met with in the physical