CHARGES AGAINST GOVERNMENT

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25679, 16 December 1948, Page 6

CHARGES AGAINST GOVERNMENT

“PENSION CUTS AND FOOD DESTROYED” MR HOLLAND DISCUSSES LEGISLATION “If anyone had said the Labour Government would destroy food and cut pensions, he would have been laughed to scorn, but that is precisely what this Government has done in .the month of December, 1948,” said Mr 3. G. Holland (Leader of the Opposition) in his address at the Winter Garden last evening. “We all remember Labour’s condemnation of the burning of coffee in Brazil. In several centres this month the Government is dumping potatoes in refuse pits—good, edible table potatoes. AH the explanations in the world cannot alter the fact that the Labour Government is destroying good food.” The Government had cut pensions by a short clause in a washing-up bill, which imposed cuts of £1 a week upwards in the superannuation pensions payable to many widows of former Public Service superannuitants—pension rates which Labour had introduced. Ever since Mr F. Hackett’s "office at any price” speech, the Government had been running away from Socialism, but-if the Government could not achieve Socialism by one method it would do so by another. Its offer of the freehold was a gigantic confidence trick, because, with the continuation of the Land Sales Act, the Labour brand of freehold became the stranglehold. “To see how hard-pressed they are,” said Mr Holland, “one has but to mention the levy on unionists. No party ever stooped to lower depths when the Government passed a law to enforce compulsory levies on their opponents, I would hang my head in shame if I felt that a penny piece of a Labour supporter’s money had been used to secure my election.”