MR FRASER ON COMMUNISTS

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25812, 25 May 1949, Page 6

MR FRASER ON COMMUNISTS

“INDUSTRIAL CHAOS PART OF POLICY ” NATIONAL PARTY ALSO ATTACKED (New Zealand Press Association.) WELLINGTON, May 24. Industrial chaos was in the interests of the Communist revolutionary ideal and was part ci the policy of weakening New Zealand, said the Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) in the report of th 3 Parliamentary Labour Party at the annual confeience of the Labour Party this evening, according to a supplied report The Auckland carpenters’ dispute, said Mr Fraser, was a political strike, organised and controlled with the real purpose of creating industrial anarchy by undermining and destroying the arbitration system, which had been and was the repeatedly approved policy of the Federation of Labour. The dispute was also a deliberate, illegal, frontal attack on the Government. The whole manoeuvre was not organised out of any concern for the trade unionists involved and its purpose was quite foreign to the objects of New Zealand trade unionism. This should be c-early seen by all New Zealand trade unionists and many of them had already taken a strong stand against being used as pawns. Other incidents had shown that industrial trouble had been deliberately fomented, magnified, and protracted by Communists on the basis of extravagant and impossible claims. Members of the Labour Party and of the trade union movement must recognise the origin and motive of all such wrecking tactics and take the necessary counter-measures. No Illusions About Communists Mr Fraser said that for the last 30 years the Labour Party had had no illusions about Communists and had uncompromisingly fought them. To-day the Communists had changed from the white ant tactics of a united front to an open attack on the Labour Party, to a campaign of vilification of Labour’s leaders both in the political party and in the trade union movement. and tc organised attacks on the system of arbitration in industrial disputes and the stabilisation policy—two of the main foundations of industrial harmony and progress. “The Labour Party will fight Communism and National Toryism, whicn has been and always will be the creator of conditions of hardship and distress which inevitably breed Communists an J Communism,” said Mr Fraser. “The issue in the coming election is whether the people wish to return to the discredited system of the past for which the Nationalists stand, or to progress with the system of welfare for all established by the Labour Government. “All measures which have been put into effect to establish the welfare of our people and maintain it have their root in Labour’s conception that government of the people by the people for the people must include direction by their elected representatives of the country’s economic affaibs in the interests of all. Opposed to this is the policy of the National Party, which looks back to the day when the State accepted a minimum of responsibility. When economic forces were leit unregulated the welfare of the people was left to chance an*t poverty and unemployment were never aosent. This year the electors will have the opportunity once again of choosing between those two concepts of government. “We will go forward to the General Election with faith in the common sense and idealism of the people of New Zealand, with pride in our cause and in our party, with fervent determination to work strenuously and unceasingly for victory, and to fight with all our ability and energy both sets of reactionaries who would pull down and overthrow the edifice of social justice erected by Labour—NationaJ-ist-Tory destroyers on the one hand and Communist destructionists on the other.”