New Marxist Party Gives Objects

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31018, 25 March 1966, Page 1

New Marxist Party Gives Objects

(New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, March 24. Dunedin’s Communists, thrown out of the Communist Party of New Zealand for failing to follow the national executive’s pro-China line in June last year, have identified themselves with a new Marxist party known as the Socialist Unity Party.

The Socialist Unity Party is yet to be fully organised on a national basis, but a party has been set up in Auckland and the Dunedin group fully supports its aims and policies.

Mr E. W. Hunter, chairman of the dissolved Dunedin branch of the Communist Party, said the local group “heartily endorsed” the policies of the new party. “The parly has no national

footing yet,” he said, “but no doubt within a measurable time some sort of national conference will be held.”

The new organisation has been formed after a split of the Communist Party of New Zealand over support for Chinese and Soviet policies. The party had strongly supported the Chinese line. Early this year six prominent Communists resigned from the party on this issue. Six months previously the Dunedin branch had been dissolved for failing to follow the directives of the national executive.

Now a new organisation has been formed of former party members, which claims to be independent in thinking, directed neither by Chinese nor Soviet policies. “In the past a lot of enthusiastic young Communists got carried away as regards the Soviet Union," Mr Hunter said.

“They thought it was some kind of paradise, that everything the Soviet people did was right, that every word their leaders uttered was the truth.

“I don’t say 1 thought this wrong at the time, but I see now that it has definitely hampered the development of the New Zealand party. “It is New Zealand circumstances that we have to study and New Zealand people we have to work with." This innovation in Communist thinking was not confined to New Zealand, Mr Hunter said. It was a world trend.

“There are arguments going on all over the world—a reassessment, a striving to get down to something solid. “We are convinced that small changes can be brought about in times of prosperity,” he said.

“New Zealand people are not wretches looking for a quick way out of their troubles.”

One of the greatest problems with which the Socialist Unity Party was concerned was the need to avoid nuclear war, Mr Hunter said. “We are prepared to work with Christians or anyone else, to aid the cause of peace,” he said. “We’ll even work with people who are violently opposed to communism.”