TOMMIES EAGER

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1944, Page 7

TOMMIES EAGER

SETTLEMENT IN N.Z.

RETURNED MAN'S OPINIONS The impression that thousands of British servicemen were eager to qualify as New Zealanders in the post-war world was gained by a Christchurch journalist who has returned from the Middle East, where he had many opportunities to discuss the subject with English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish men in uniform. One thing above all others that impressed in the majority of Tommies, who asked question after question on all aspects of life in New Zealand, was their earnest wish to earn a decent living as wage earners, he says. They had no illusions. They knew that this was no country where money could be made without work, and they were prepared to work. That had been the tragedy for many of them. They had been prepared to work, and before the war the work was not there for them to do. Take the case of an Air Force sergeant, a rear gunner wearing the D.C.M. His present hazardous job is the only one he has had in his twenty-five years of life. Another example—a young Scot this time. He joined the Regular Army three years before the war because he could not find a job. And he was a trained mechanic. "At least the Army gave me three meals a day and a certain amount of pay, although below what you Kiwis get," he said. "I couldn't stomach going on the ' dole,' and the Army was the only firm that offered me a job." No Trade Training Those two men are representative of a cross-section of the community who may find it difficult to get to New Zealand as approved immigrants, states the journalist. Or, rather, the Air Force man is, because he has no trade training and no experience of any work other than that of destruction. The Army man, as a trained mechanic, is in a happier position. Others who hope to come to New Zealand when Germany and Japan are vanquished are actuated by a desire to seek and earn better living standards. They are men who were in jobs when war came, but either those jobs offer no security of tenure or they hold out little or no hope of any substantial advancement. One such was a tank corporal in the famous Seventh Armoured Division. Before the war he held down a £3 a week labouring job, and on that he supported a wife and three children. Farm workers also were interested to know of conditions in New Zealand. The general attitude of these men was that, while England probably would go through a period of prosperity from the point of view of the wage earner, in the years immediately following the war, that time of rebuilding would be just as inevitably followed by a depression with widespread unemployment. Bitter Depression Years "And I want to be out of England when that happens," said a Welsh coal miner, at present serving in an engineers' unit. "I went through the last depression, when no coal was coming from the pits, and there was many a time when we did not have even a crust of bread in the house." That was the story told by many an artisan and tradesman. The long bitter years of depression and unemployment had left an abiding fear of the future in their minds. And that fear was based not only on the possibility of a further long term without work, but also on the nagging thought that such enforced idleness would rob them of their skill and automatically deprive them of the hope of re-employment. When the Beveridge Plan, with its sweeping scheme of benefits, was announced, in its original form, it was a subject which transcended all discussions on the war in Middle East British camps. The ordinary soldier, with but vague prospects of reemployment when he was demobilised, saw in it the promise of some security. When many of the provisions of the plan were whittled away, his disappointment was deep and lasting. Older men in the forces are more particularly concerned to offer their children a better start in life than they had themselves. Their faith in economic security has been shaken and they have seen the tragedy of many thousands of young people leaving school and waiting patiently to qualify for the "dole." By and large, these men are more actively politically conscious than the average New Zealander, as can be gathered from the number of men born in the British Isles who are prominent in the Dominion's national and local body politics to-day. The Will To Work Living conditions afford another powerful incentive for many of these men to seek a new country. Home to many of them means one or two rooms several floors up in a crowded tenement, with the minimum of privacy, primitive sanitary arrangements, and with no other playground for their children than the dark and narrow alleyway below. Some of the men who wish to come out to live and work with us would not make suitable immigrants; there are others who would. They have the will to work, and all they ask is that they be given the opportunity to prove their capacity to work and their fitness to be absorbed into the community. The Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, in a recent address in England, said that while New Zealand must first make provision for the re-employ-ment of her- own servicemen, he thought that next preference should be given to immigrants from Britain, preferably those who had been demobilised.