THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14916, 14 March 1914, Page 7

THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

MEETING IN VICTORIA SQUARE

A couple of hundred citizens listened to speeches delivered ill Victoria equare, last night by members of the Social Democratic Party.

The Chairman (Mr Hiram Hunter) ridiculed the suggestion that the Social-Democratic Party contemplated for one moment an alliance with the Liberal" Party. They were asked, he said, to put the "Liberals" in power and Mr Massey in disgrace, but an alliance on that basis would mean the sacrifice of all their organisation; no Social-Democrat would subscribe to such a policy. They might be agreeable to an alliance with the Liberal Party if they could 6ee that it would be of any advantage to the SocialDomocratic Party, but they were not going to "look at" an alliance of the nature proposed. Mr J. Thorn, in the course of a igpeeioh wliich laafced ome hour and twenty minutes, said the workers were growing tired of Mr G. W. Russell, M.P. He had no doubt that in time the astute member for Avon would supplant his leader, Sir Joseph Ward,' but there were' some things that Mr Russell could not do. He could not, for example, convince them that Sir Joseph Ward was progressive, and Mr Massey reactionary, because the latter followed Sir Joseph. Ward's measures. Mr Russell had commended Sir Joseph Ward for not disclosing his policy, on the ground that Mr Massey would steal it. If Mr Massey was good enough to steal Sir Joseph Ward's progressive policy, why did not Mr Russell join the Reform Government? Mr Russell was of the genus "votecatcher," and his party was a con{;lomeration of voto-catchers. Not so ong ago. Mr Russell, as chairman of the Board of Governors of Canterbury College, had opposed the "Clarion," a Socialistic organ, being filed among other papers in the Public Library. But now Mr Russell was a State-So-cialist. (Laughter.) The member for Avon obviously thought more of the interests of the Liberal Party than of the rights of the people. Mr J. McCombs, M.P., excused himself from a speech on the ground that the hour was late, and Mr E. J. Howard had already to speak. His views, he said, would be ventilated next week, when he would address the Opawa electors. Mr E. J. Howard confined his remarks to Mr Russell's attitude towards '•militarism." Mr Russell, the "Independent Mr Isitt." and other members of the Liberal Party, he urged, were taking up their present attitude towards the Defence Act because they realisod that the anti-militarists had a lot of votes. By doing this, and other things, they were only showing that the Liberal Party was the greatest political fraud that New Zealand had ever known. The Liberal Party was dead and it should either become a respectable corpse ot resurrect itself with the help of the Massey Government. The Social-Democratic Party had no nso for it.