LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26514, 31 August 1951, Page 10

LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE

OFFICIALS REPLY TO MR MCALPINE

Replying to Mr J. K. McAlpine, National Party candidate for Selwyn, on the subject of the last annual conference of the Labour Party, Mr J. L. Laby, secretary of the North Canterbury Labour Representation Committee, in a statement yesterday said; “Mr McAlpine, in his reply to my challenge to prove his words, has gone to great lengths to admit that his original statement was incorrect and was merely ‘assumption.’ The original statement as reported in ‘The Press’ was ‘that the Labour Party conference had rejected a motion to remove Communists from the party.’ He now states that what he meant was the question of trade union affiliation with overseas organisations. “Mr McAlpine ignores my statement. which I am prepared to support by evidence, that no Communist can become a member of the Labour Party, and that no motion on the basis of his original statement was ever put to a Labour Party conference.”

Mr R. H. McDonald, secretary of the Canterbury District Trades Council, said his organisation agreed with Mr Laby’s statement. Mr McAlpine had assumed that the Labour Party disagreed in nrinciple with the motion of Mr K. McL. Baxter to -the conference. The only objection was to writing the name of some overseas organisation into the Labour Party’s constitution.

“Had there been any other reason there might have been some justification for the persistent and erroneous suggestions of disunity among our ranks,” said Mr McDonald.