LABOUR CANDIDATES’ SPEECHES

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26265, 9 November 1950, Page 3

LABOUR CANDIDATES’ SPEECHES

Little interest was shown on Tuesday evening in the open-air meetings of Labour Party candidates for the local body elections. Candidates have been divided into two groups, and each group was to have held two streetcorner meetings last evening. One meeting in St. Albans was abandoned because there was no audience, and at each of the other meetings there was an attendance of about 10.

“It is our intention to go seriously into the housing problem,” said Mr J. E. Jones. “The present City Council has let the Bottle Lake plantation out to private contract. What is wrong with using the timber ourselves? If returned we intend to introduce a scheme to use the timber at Bottle Lake for the benefit of the city. When I was on the City Council in 1938. 1939, and 1940 we built 50 houses—homes for old age pensioners and four cottages for caretakers. What has been done in the last three years? Not one house built. What we did in the past we can do now, and much of it with our own staff. Admittedly materials and labour are short, but as a Labour movement we have the unions behind us, and they will always give us No. 1 priority." He strongly favoured a ward system of representation, said Mr J. S. Barr, a City Council candidate. There was no suggestion of reverting to the old I ward system whereby only money : raised in an area was spent within ' that area. The Labour Party favoured a ward system for representation only, □nd believed that the city would be better served. “There are 45 candidates for the council this year,” he ■ said. “Possibly we will know about 1 20 per cent, of them personally and j after that will have to vote blind on mere names. The city has become so large that people of even average intelligence are finding it difficult to select their candidates.”