ELECTION RESULTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 137, 12 June 1944, Page 2

ELECTION RESULTS

I supported the Labour cause consistently from its foundation up to 1938, imagining, like most other young people of a generation ago, that there lay the path to real democracy, prosperity and individual freedom. Now, having seen the machine in motion for nearly a decade, lam sadly disillusioned. lam fed up of hearing the party bugle sounded almost daily by incorrigible party-ites, who are always trotting out the slump as an excuse for everything—good, bad or indifferent —done by the present Government. There was a period of quite good times prior to the slump, but that is conveniently left unmentioned. Anyone could insure himself or join a lodge—l am sorry I did not do so—and receive far better sickness benefits than so-called social security is likely to confer. The Government Is not working for the toilers, but the toilers are working for it. It has failed to increase the ratio between wages and purchasing power; reduced it, rather. It has doubled, if not trebled, the cost of administration. It has queues of people waiting at every post office to undergo the gruelling task of form-filling. J. ORR.

The Labour party evidently cannot take a beating, and they are looking for the reason for their defeat; but could a country, city, or even a small borough be successful governed by trade union secretaries? According to my union secretary, I was supposed to vote Labour only, but' I had a different opinion. The officials of my union do not tell me which horses to back, and I know my horses as well as I know which councillors to place first. LABOURER-CITIZEN.

[This correspondence is closed.— Ed.]