LABOUR PARTY INCONSISTENCIES

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20957, 11 September 1933, Page 7

LABOUR PARTY INCONSISTENCIES

TO THE EDITOR OF THE P8.E33. Sir, —Perhaps I may be pardoned for rejoicing that in the very issue in which I pointed out that typical supporters of the Labour party were being driven back to a negative attiture and the theory of the lesser evil, there appeared a letter above mine, signed by one of them, "Labour All the Way," in which this apologia is advanced in pristine purity. Allow • me to quote it: "It is utterly foolish for anyone to say that it [the Labour party! would make a mess of it, if in power, for it is beyond our ken to say so much. In any event they could not make it any worse." For the rest I will leave "Labour All the Way" to the tender mercies of his adversary, J. H. Robinson. My main purpose in writing ' again is to appeal to the remaining intelligence of the "Hear, hear" Labour party heelers in two little matters, its trade union record in New Zealand and abroad and its approval of the Roosevelt plan. After the war millions of workers all over the world flocked into the trade unions. In New Zealand there was a remarkable influx. The Labour party, everywhere but in the Soviet Union, was in almost undisputed command. In Germany the Social Democratic [Labour] party, in England the Labour party, in New Zealand the Labour party had but to command and the trade unions obeyed. So it has been these 15 years; yet what do we see? The great Trade Union Congress of Germany with its "Iron Front" fighters meekly capitulated to Hitler in the greatest trade union debacle in history, without the slightest show of resistance. The great Social Democratic leaders remained faithful lackeys, but they were humiliated and treated to kicks. In spite of this they now give the Hitler system their blesslu g ' T , 1 ? nder Labour party leadership the British trade unions have declined in membership by nearly 50 per cent, since 1920, the aggregate membership decreasing from 6,505,000 to 3,376,000. It is useless for the Labour party to blame the economic crisis for the decline of the membership, for the declined continued through the years of comparative prosperity. In New Zealand many 6f the craft unions have already perished and others are moribund. Everywhere the story in the same: bankrupt leadership and bankrupt unions, the inevitable concomitant ol bankrupt policies. Both Mr H. E. Holland and Mrs Mc- i Combs cay that the Roosevelt plan accords with Labour ideals. How does enlightened Labour opinion regard the plan? The "Labour Monthly" (Britain) calls it a myth and a new legend: "A social, philanthropic, and even radical aura is cast around the new policy Roosevelt's 'new deal* represents the most comprehensive and ruthless attempt yet made by finance-capital in any country to consolidate its power with the entire strength of the State machine over the whole field of industry, to hold the workers in subjection under extreme and intensified exploitation with a universal lowering of standards, to conduct a world campaign for markets. ... By one stroke all anti-trust legislation is swept away. • •. • Tne second characteristic is inflation, which means a universal extreme reduction of wages for all workers, such as make the guaranteed wage standard a mockery. The new industrial codes establish a semi-mili-tary regime with consequent destruction of independent workers' organisation. At the same time as the cotton code is announced the Department of Agriculture decrees a bounty to cotton growers of seven to 20 dollars for every acre of the rising cotton crop ploughed in and destroyed. The starvation character of the new deal is manifest. The illusions this time will reach their nemesis even more quickly than before." Do the workers want a similar nemesis here? They will have it if they continue to follow the Labour party.—Yours, etc., DISILLUSIONED IN 1919.