BROADCAST ON RUSSIA

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27040, 15 May 1953, Page 12

BROADCAST ON RUSSIA

MR WALSH REPLIES TO MINISTER CENSORSHIP ATTEMPT DENIED (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 14. "I did not raise the question of censorship, as Mr Algie says. I protested against the Minister allowing his department to make the country’s radio services available for possible propaganda,” said Mr F. P. Walsh, president of the Federation of Labour, replying today to the Minister’s statement yesterday. Mr Walsh said that it was generally admitted that visits to Russia and her satellites were sponsored solely to popularise communism and to secure support for it within the community. It was the duty of Mr Algie, as it was the duty of every accepted leader in each section and at every level of the the community, to preserve Parliamentary democracy from all its enemies. But Mr Algie’s reply to his letter of protest gave the people every reason to believe that the Government was pursuing a contrary policy. “On the other hand, I should welcome the Government putting on an objective speaker on so-called trade unionism in Russia; but Mr Langley cannot be held an objective speaker on this subject,” said Mr Walsh. Mr Walsh said that Mr Algie should know that there was no trade union movement in Russia or in any other totalitarian State, and the regimentation of workers was not trade unionism by and stretch of the imagination. Mr Algie evidently was unable to distinguish between what was plain propaganda and what was not He was pleased, however, to say that that was not the case with some of his colleague’s or with the National Party’s official organ "Freedom,” which recently criticised Mr Langley and his team for being “busy as beavers proving beyond aU shadow of doubt that Russia, where everyone has a pair of boots, is indeed the millenium.” Surely, said Mr Walsh, it should not be the policy of the Government to take any steps that might be construed as helping in the destruction of Parliamentary democracy t but to guard free society against questionable propagenda.

"Finally, I would like to say that I would welcome the opportunity of going on the air to explain the machinations of this Government in refusing to give effect to amendmets to the Stabilisation Act and Regulations to enable the workers to have an application heard before the Court of Arbitration on a fair and equitable basis,” concluded Mr Walsh.