Parliamentary Candidates Grouped By Research Team

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29380, 6 December 1960, Page 18

Parliamentary Candidates Grouped By Research Team

“The Press" Special Service

AUCKLAND, December 5.

Thirty-seven of the Labour Party candidates and 34 of the National Party gave their occupations as “members of Parliament,” and apart from them more candidates came under the heading of “professional and secretarial” workers than under any other category. These facts have emerged during a survey being conducted by Dr. Lloyd Prichard and Mr B. Tabb, of the University of Auckland, who are investigating types of political appeal as expressed in the election.

The researchers are interested not only in the manifestos of the major parties, but also in the appeals made individually by members of those parties in the campaign, particularly as in some cases these differed from or added to the party manifestos. Appeal to Electors Dr. Prichard and Mr Tabb are interested also in the appeals made to the electorate by the minority groups. For the review, the best available evidence is the printed election addresses of the candidates, and the researchers would be glad to get copies of these. , . Dealing with th" 34 candidates

which the National Party classed as “M.P.’s”, the researchers note that the party mentions that 10 of them might also be classed as professsional or secretarial workers, one as a manual worker, 18 as farmers, and five as “commercial.”

The researchers note the high proportion of professional and secretarial classes (21) among the Labour candidates, as compared with 16 of National. Manual workers for Labour included a french polisher, a driver, a freezing worker, a miner and an electrician. The Labour team had nine farmers, including a small seeds expert in the Government service. 27 Farmers

Sixteen of the' Social Credit candidates came under the “professional and secretarial” heading, 27 were farmers. 14 were manual workers and 13 were in the commercial group. Of the Communist Party’s 19 candidates, 13 were manual workers. and of the four who were classed as professional or secretarial three were party organisers and one a civil servant.