ACCUSATION REFUTED

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14712, 2 July 1948, Page 2

ACCUSATION REFUTED

Sir, —During my fifteen years os a Member of Parliament I—like most M.P.’s—was called various sorts of names and charged with doing this wrong thing or not doing that right one. Nov/ that I have been out of politics for nearly five years I am astonished to find that I have been dubbed a Communist. The charge was made at an R S.A. meeting at Tauranga. Unfortunately I was not present at this meeting. However, I have since met the speaker and, after some conversation, he was satisfied that he had wronged me and seeks to correct the injustice by an apology which appears as an 'advertisement in this issue of tho “Times.”

lam not a Communist, have never been one—not even a “fellow traveller.” I 'joined the Society for Closer Relations with Russia as from its formation in 1941 at Wellington when I was Speaker of the House of Representatives, and no one whispered that I was a Communist. For the next four years or more British people everywhere appreciated the Soviet peoples as gallant allies, and various societies formed throughout the Empire tried to create fuller understanding and better feeling between the Russians and ou''selves. The Society for Closer Relations in New Zealand was part of that movement, and was always a non-party and nansectarian body as its constitution clearly stated. It included, and still includes, a number of Members of Parliament. The late Mr Harry Atm ore, M.P., was its President until his death. I am no longer a member of this Society, because I was forced by events to the conclusion that it could not serve any useful purpose. If you seek mutual understanding and friendship with another (person or people), there must be a friendly response to justify your attitude. Unhappily for the world there were few signs of it. For some time there have been none. Russia is distrustful, suspicious and hostile. One shudders to think what Soviet foreign policy may lead up to. . I have had something to do with Communists in past years, because I have had to fighj them. As Member of Parliament for Napier I was opposed by an official Communist candidate—one of four who that year stood for Parliament in New Zealand. During the slumn I was faced with the grave problem of a strike of unemployed men led bv Communists. It was a tough job to tackle. I got Mr Semple to come up and help me, but Bob found the task just about as difficult as I did. 1 have spoken and written against Communism. Last year and this year I sharply criticised Communism in papers read to the Auckland (Anglican) Clergy Association, and to the Christian Frontier Movement of which latter I am Secretary.

For some time in Tauranga it has been whispered occasionally that I was a Communist. Nothing cv°r said of me has'grieved me so much. We all have our faults, hut disloyalty to my country is not one of mine. I should have thought my public record would have spared me the infliction of so grave a slander.—l am, etc.. W. E. BARNARD.