THE TRAMWAY BOARD ELECTION

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21907, 7 October 1936, Page 13

THE TRAMWAY BOARD ELECTION

TO THE KDITOH OF THE VHSSB. sir—-The Christchurch .citizen who does not know that the local Labour movement is dominated and directed bv the Trades Hall junta is living in a world of delusion. It is not worth proving the obvious. Every sensible Person knows it. Labour in control of such a board as the Tramway Board must inevitably mean that a great public service is being run for a section of the public favoured by Labour Any fair man reviewing the present board’s term of office must admit that Its ruling passion has been to secure revenge for the defeat at the strike, to punish the volunteers who kept the service running then, to restore, to place and profit the strikers who would have brought the service to a standstill and caused loss and inconvenience to every citizen. There is this further to It. The tramwavs are used chiefly by the workers. They arc the workers’ motor-cars. To bring them to a stop must impose incalculable hardship on the workers. The strikers were in effect striking not at the wealthy but at the very people they pretend to champion. And any increase in wages, shortening of hours, or further favours must be provided not by the wealthy but by the workers, the great majority of whom ware not nearly in such favourable circumstances as the strikers. In a reasonably just order of society, a popular public service like