Layman Attacks “N.Z. Tablet”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31316, 11 March 1967, Page 16

Layman Attacks “N.Z. Tablet”

(N.Z.. Press Association) DUNEDIN, March 10. A Dunedin trade union leader has attacked the Roman Catholic newspaper, the “New Zealand Tablet,” for its editorial criticism of the stop-work call by the Federation of Labour.

He is the secretary of the Otago Trades Council, Mr W. C. McDonnell, who is also a well-known Soman Catholic layman. Mr McDonnell said yesterday that he was concerned with the turn the controversy on the question of holding stop work meetings had taken The “critical and antagonistic” attitude of the “New Zea-

land Tablet,” was unreasonable and was based on an incomplete knowledge of the facts by the writers of the leader. Mr McDonnell is well known in Roman Catholic lay circles throughout New Zealand and he is disturbed that acrimony based on religious prejudice might once again be injected into the body politic. “The attitude of the Tablet is in keeping with its attitude to the Federation of Labour over many years,” he said. “On one occasion after an attack in its columns the late F. P. Walsh sent a reply which was contemptuously refused publication. “In its latest publication the Tablet’ endeavours to create a division between the unions which are affiliated to the Federation of Labour: apparently the leader writer is

unaware of, or ignores the fact that the shop assistants and the clerical workers as well as other white collar workers’ unions are affiliated with the Federation of Labour. ...

“The Federation of Labour has been asked to fill the role of adviser to the Government: the ‘Tablet’ editor brushes ‘aside Mr Skinner’s reply that the Federation of Labour has continually sought to influence the Government to halve its economic stride . . . “I want to make it plain to the people of New Zealand, Mr McDonnell said, that the opinions of the leader writer in the ‘Tablet’ and of the contributor to the ‘Zealandia* do not carry any authority of the Catholic Church, but are merely the individual ideas of the writers.

! “However, it is unfortunate j that these ideas have been put forward in a manner to create 1 bitterness.”