Mr Nash’s Red Herring

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26512, 29 August 1951, Page 6

Mr Nash’s Red Herring

In his search for a way out from his equivocal attitude towards the respective positions of the old and new waterfront unionists, Mr Nash takes a cue from Mr McLagan’s story of a “Barnes-Holland honey“moon” and speaks of Mr Holland’s “admitted co-operation with “Messrs Barnes and Hill, Drennan “ and Potter after Labour had re- “ fused to deal with them. . . The implication that the watersiders’ [leaders were broken, impotent men when the Labour Government—after years of struggle with them—left- office is belied by the fact that they were in tight control of the union when the National Party

Government took office. The suggestion that the watersiders’ leaders were men spurned by the Labour Party is contradicted by the fact that Mr Hill, at least, was sufficiently persona grata to address the Labour Party, conference in Auck-

land in 1950 (after the General Election) where he felt it proper to give the gathering assurances that in toe six months (to then) of the National Party Government’s term of office there had been 25 stoppages of work op the waterfront. However, it calls for particular hardihood for Mr Nash now to try to distract attention from his equivocations by scolding Mr. Holland for associating with Messrs Barnes,

Hill and company, when he himself 1 had called on the Government to bring the watersiders’ leaders to a compulsory conference at the start of the strike, the watersiders’ leaders, as he well knew, still being Messrs Barnes and Hill. In effect, Mr Nash claims credit now for the Labour Government’s refusal (in its last months of office) to deal with Messrs Barnes, Hill and company and credit for (during the strike) counsellin-r the present Government to deal with them. Far from distracting attention from equivocation about the old and new waterfront unions, Mr Nash’s red herring attracts attention, in fact, to the anoi

imaly that while he was “ neither “for nor against” the watersiders and their leaders during the strike, he was “against” his own Government dealing with the same leaders, and “for” the present Government dealing with them.

Waitaki Bridge.— lt was reported to a meeting of the South Island Motor Union last evening that work on the raising of the decking on the Waitaki bridge will commence in September,