Honey Marketing

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23944, 11 May 1943, Page 4

Honey Marketing

Although the beekeepers’ convention in Christchurch last week cannot bind the Canterbury Beekeepers’ Association, it may be expected that the association will accept the resolution adopted by the convention, promising co-operation with the Government in the supply of honey, and will rescind its own “ flat refusal ” to supply. One of the few- facts beyond dispute in this dispute over the honey commandeer is that beekeepers generally think the Marketing Department has imposed a very hard and unfair bargain. They have not, however, generally agreed about the terms of a fair one. In the circumstances, therefore, the convention guarded beekeepers’ interests fully by including in the resolution to supply a proviso that the Government should review “ the whole price “ situation and grade schedules . . . “ in the light of proper representa- “ tions from the honey industry.” This is a request impossible to refuse. But the Canterbury association’s threat was one to w'hich the Government could not possibly yield. It cannot be said too plainly that no group can at present threaten direct action to enforce economic claims or demands, however fair they may seem to be, without threatening national interests that must be paramount and must be respected. The striker who threatens to down tools, the beekeeper who threatens not to deliver honey, the dairyman who threatens to pour his milk down the drain, until his demands are satisfied, may not know what he is doing, or may not like the right name for it; but he is threatening sabotage, and if he goes on to fulfil his threat, he is a public enemy. Such a resolution as the Canterbury association tacked to the hive is either mischief or nonsense. Its members will hardly

think again without deciding that it was a piece of nonsense, to be acknowledged and forgotten. It is not to be supposed that they will persist in defiance, having been shown what it looks like and what it is.