The Political Crisis

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23751, 24 September 1942, Page 4

The Political Crisis

Reports that the Government’s handling of the Waikato miners’ strike has precipitated a political crisis can be accepted as substantially true, if only because it is difficult to believe that any Government could survive such a revelation of its own incompetence. So far, however, Mr Fraser and Mr Holland have not made statements on the subject; and until they do, judgment on the issues between them must be withheld. One general comment, however, is possible. The strike in the Waikato is sufficiently serious, and the Government’s handling of it sufficiently inept, to justify Mr Holland and his party in concluding that the agreement on which the war administration is based ought to be reconsidered. Moreover, Mr Holland’s own position has been made difficult by the apparent refusal of the Government as a whole to endorse the policy which, as deputy-chairman of the War Cabinet, he set out on September 15:

I want to assure the public that the law will be observed and that those who break it will be dealt with fearlessly and firmly. There can be no thought of any arrangement that interferes with the processes of the law, by which those who break it are punished. Nevertheless, it is important that the question whether the present system of war administration should continue should not be decided solely on the issue of the Government’s handling of the coal strike, or on some issue—as for instance the rights and wrongs of bringing the mines under State control—incidental to its handling of the strike. What the party leaders must now ask themselves, what every member of Parliament must now ask himself, is whether, on its three months record, the war administration ought to continue. Is its handling of the Waikato strike an unhappy lapse, or is it merely the most spectacular of many proofs that it is incapable of uAity, consistency, or courage?