The Press. Tuesday, June 10, 1919. The Labour Party.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16515, 10 June 1919, Page 6

The Press. Tuesday, June 10, 1919. The Labour Party.

tAn instructive little quarrel has •been going on betwoon Mr H. E. Holland, M.P., and Mr Voitch, TVl.f®., arising out of some strictures passed by Mr Veitch upon the methods of the Labour Party. Veitch, as is well-known, dislikes the policy and practice of the Labour extremists, of whom Mr Holland is the most prominent. In a speech in Wellington last week Mr Holland declared that Mr Veitch had not for four years jpast been a member of any political Labour organisation, but had been permitted to attend the caucus of the Parliamentary Labour Party until the be■ginning of last session. This arrangement was then terminated. The internal arrangements of the Labour (.{roup in the House are not of great public interest, but we think the public ought to know the principal reasons, as stated bv Mr Holland, why moderate Labour men like Mr Veitch, are distasteful to the Red Feds. Mr Veitch. to begin with, was "one of the men responsible for inflicting the Massey "party on New Zealand." He was also, along with others, "responsible for inflicting the companion evil of conscription on the country." Further, he cast, his vote for the Bill which provided for the disfranchisement of those who resisted the Military Service Act. There is no suggestion that Mr Veitch has ever been backward in urging the claims of Labour in Parliament or that his sympathies with the working man are less active than those of Mr Holland and his colleagues. The case against him is that stated by Mr Holland. Mr Veitch's reply was perfectly simple, and to our mind very effoctive. "I supported the Act," he said, "because I honestly believed in it. You were honest in your opposi- ' tion to it if you believed it to bo u rong, yot According to your reason'ing I was dishonest in supporting it, "although I believed it to be right. ' In other words, the champion of the objectors denies me the " privilege of a conscience." That is well put, and Mr Veitch no less effectively defends his position in respect of the other charges against him, reminding Mr Holland that there ar o positive as well as negative consciences men who were as conscientious in believing they were right to fight in France for Mr Holland as those who believed that they ought not to fight. In conclusion, Mr Veitch summed "up the grounds of dispute in a sentence: " In short, to disagree with you, the self-appointed Kaiser of the Labour "movement, is to be disloval to Lab-< "our." H<*re Mr Veitch touches the; root of organised Labour's weakness. ! The test of any individual's fitness to ! receive official recognition by the Lab-j our Partv is not his merit as a capable and sincere friend of working-class in- i' terests. He may have no interest ! save that of his fellow-workmen; all ( his activities may be devoted to the j ] furthering of the Labour cause; but 1 unless he subscribes to the fanatical ' teaching of Mr Holland and his friends ' on points that do not concern the 1 workingman as a workingman, he is * banned by the Labour organisation. « The Labour movement could go on c without aav sacrifice of .LaJbour nrjn- J

riple if the peculiar doctrines of Mr Holland had never been thought of in this country. But Labour's cause is i?lia?kled to those doctrines, and it will not make much real progress in, the sympathy of the people while ifc is so handicapped.