Mr O’Brien has plans for ‘startling’ memoirs

Press, 3 February 1979, Page 2

Mr O’Brien has plans for ‘startling’ memoirs

PA Wellington The political memoirs of the former Independent Labour member of Parliament for Island Bay, Mr J. G. O’Brien, may be a thorn in the side of his former political allies. Mr O’Brien, in a frontpage article in yesterday’s “Dominion” newspaper, was quoted as saying: “Rowling, Tizard, and Freer — they’ll all come unstuck.” The man who was thrown cat of the Labour Party intends to write a book covering the rise to the Prime Ministership of the late Mr Norman Kirk, Mr Kirk’s death, the “Sutch affair,” the changed direction of the Labour Party, and finally his own political demise. “I have quite a lot of information that will startle a lot of people,” Mr O’Brien said last evening. “It won’t be a book of scandals, but it

will tell my side of the story.” One of the more startling allegations the book will contain is that a Maoist influence is growing in the Labour Party organisation.

The book will also record Mr O’Brien’s belief that Mr Kirk kept two “black books” filled with useful information on his colleagues. “I know quite a lot of the contents of these books,” he said. Asked what effect the book might have on the present Labour leader (Mr Rowling), Mr O’Brien said: “It cannot help but be damaging if it is to tell the truth.” Mr O’Brien said that he was approached by two prominent publishers last year, and after thinking things over during the holidays he had decided to take proposals back to the publishers within a few weeks.

His idea is to prepare a text and have it edited by a journalist friend who helped Mr O’Brien’s writing during the General Election campaign. Mr O’Brien wants to explore in his book why the Labour Party lost the last two elections “at a time when it should have won them — at a time when the Labour Government in Britain seemed unshakable.”