Socred 'at threshold’

Press, 26 March 1980, Page 6

Socred 'at threshold’

The Social Credit League will soon cross the "critical threshold” of 23 per cent electoral support, which could give it up to 15 seats in a General Election, according to the president of the league (Mr B. C. Beetham). “We could be sitting on something like 23 per cent at the moment. The next poll will have us so close to the critical threshold of 25 per cent that the National and Labour parties will be terribly worried as to what to do about us,” Mr Beetham said.

The significance of 25 per cent electoral support was that it could mean the dif-

ference between one or two seats in Parliament and 12 or 15 seats, he said.

“It is when we get through that level that the electoral system, which has been working against us so far, starts working for us.”

Mr Beetham said that the National and Labour parties “obviously believed” that Social Credit had this support, as their strategy and tactics had shown. Mr Beetham was in Christchurch yesterday to launch the Beetham-Dwyer Foundation, which aims to collect SIM. Half of this fund would be used to finance the league’s 1981 election campaign, and the

rest would be used to strengthen the league up to the 1984 election.

The chairman of the league’s national finance council (Mr A. W. Shaw) said league administrators and regional chairmen had pledged $217,000 to the foundation in the last eight weeks, before it had “gone public.”

“I am quite confident that this foundation will be over-subscribed,” Mr Shaw said.

Support for the league had grown so much that the number of launching functions for the foundation had been increased trom 18 to 25.