Socialist "Good Fellows."

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19461, 7 November 1928, Page 10

Socialist "Good Fellows."

At one of Mr Sullivan's meetings recently the Mayor of New Brighton said, in effect, that whatever the

electors of Avon think about politics they most agree that they have never had a better representative than their present 11, P. What was particularly in the Mayor's mind, as he went on to show, was the promptness shown by Mr Sullivan in acknowledging communications from the Council and his diligence in .attending to all the electorate's local needs. Mr Sullivan has been & good member in those respects, and if courtesy and attention to his electorate were all that we require in our representatives in Parliament, the electors of Avon would be perfectly safe in returning Mr Sullivan again. It happens, however, that politics is a rather bigger business than this, and requires a good deal dore in those sent to Parliament than that they should be w good fellows/ The first thing the electors require to know about any candidate is his political goal, whether it is or is not immediately attainable. In the case of all Labour candidates they know that the goal is Socialism—in our own time if that is possible—and that every ; vote cast for such candidates brings the goal nearer. It is true that many of these candidates are good fellows and, other things being equal, that it is pleasant to have good fellows in Parliament. It would be pleasant, if one had to be robbed, to have a good fellow as burglar, and a good fellow as bailiff if one had to receive that kind of guest. But the Socialist in Parliament is a Socialist first, as he ought to be, and a good or bad fellow, as the case may be, afterwards; though the position is sometimes reversed while

he is still a candidate. All Labour candidates at present are going softly, and speaking softly, and covering their red ties. They know that New Zealand would not knowingly and willingly destroy its social and industrial system and embark on a policy of revolution. So they do not speak about, revolution. They speak abont justice—as if they alone loved it; and equality—as if they wanted it or could bring it about; and the poor and the unemployed—as if they, and they only, felt for them, and could give them all work and* comfort. They undertake to help all kinds of people—from mortgaged farmers to fathers and mothers of large families who find it a burden to buy schoolboofes—and they are experienced enough to know that even the most shameless bid for a vote will succeed sometimes with the ignorant and simple. It must be remember**} also that .the

"good fellow" bid i 8 made priii(iipally to those who are not regular Labour voters, or believers in Socialism. It is made to those people who think, mainly through laziness, that if good fellows do no good in Parliament they will at least do no harm—if they do not d"op their Socialistic principles altogether. The regular Labour vote will be cast for the regular Labour candidates, as the leaders of the Party very well know. But there is a vote in every community which is not strongly partisan, either because it does not believe in Party or because it believes vaguely that all Parties, once they are given responsibility, act alike, and it is this moderate but colourless section which Labour is especially seeking to conciliate. It is necessary to say very plainly that all who vote for Labour in this spineless way are working for the Socialist revolution. Labour has not changed its objective, but only its methods. It is as determined as ever it was to introduce Socialism, and since it is unable to do so without nonSocialist votes, it is concentrating on those electors who are most easily caught by apparently well-intentioned talk. Anti-Socialists of all shades deserve all that will follow if they listen.