The Real Issue

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22518, 28 September 1938, Page 10

The Real Issue

Several members of the Socialist Cabinet have taken up the challenge of the Hon. Adam ’Hamilton as to the real issue with which the electors are faced an the forthcoming General Electiori. Mr Hamilton has expressed it in unequivocal terms. In his speech on Friday night he said:

The real issue is private enterprise and British freedom versus Socialism and State ownership. Is New Zealand [he asked] going to throw overboard the economic system' that has built up a wonderful country? The Prime Minister says the battle is between stupidity and plain common sense. If the Prime Minister insists I shall agree—but the common sensQ is on our side—-not his.

In the Nationalist Party’s manifesto the same thought is set out by Mr Hamilton in the plainest possible language. “We give to the “people of the Dominion an assurance of hope “for the future,” he skys. “We promise them “a restoration of personal freedom in their “ work and in their leisure and we. promise “to maintain the highest standard of family «life as the. only sound basis for the future of "society. . . . Under the principles which “ actuate Labour legislators, the State must “stand supreme, and the urge for supremacy “must inevitably»be carried to the point where “ the freedom of the individual vanishes. That “is the road which we are travelling to-day, “ and in our opinion, it leads downhill to “ national destruction.” '

Try as they may. Labour Ministers and candidates cannot brush past this issue as if it did not exist. The truth is that it has always been the fundamental issue in every campaign in every country in which Labour and. antiLabour forces have been arrayed against each other. Socialism, acknowledged or unacknowledged by Labour supporters in New Zealand, has always been not only a plank but also the first plank in the Labour Party’s platform, just as the liberty of the individual and freedom of private enterprise have always been the first plank in the platforms of parties opposed to Labour, and therefore opposed to Socialism. Ministers who, only a few years ago, were proud to belong to the “ Red ” Federation, today are ludicrously side-stepping the hurdle they erected themselves, because they realise that it has grown under their hands until today it is too high for them to jump. They pooh-pooh the idea that socialisation is their objective. Is their memory so conveniently short that they cannot remember when from soap-box and lorry and platform they harangued their misguided followers in advocacy not only of Socialism but of revolutionary Socialism. To-day their reluctant memories balk at recalling those impassioned addresses. It is true that some of the more honest of them still boldly and even proudly proclaim their allegiance to socialistic principles, in spite of the embarrassment that their candour causes comrades who are out to win the election at all costs and by any means, even the means of disavowing their printed constitution. Some compromisers, realising that Socialism is not a popular word, substitute for it “ gradualism. But gradualism is merely a euphemism—a convenient, better sounding word that might mean any one of a number of things. What it does mean is simply the gradual approach to the Socialised State. And that is exactly the policy of the Labour Government. Unfortunately for them, its sponsors have been too eager, too impatient. Instead of taking gradual, almost imperceptible steps towards the cherished objective, they have cracked on the pace and brought the goal too swiftly to sight; and only the wilfully blind will refuse to see it. Mr Hamilton has shown the objective and has shown its antithesis in his own clear-cut policy. The electors have to decide whether they want to become State servants or free citizens —whether Socialist stupidity or free common sense will prevail. Other issues, though important, are secondary.