Mr Beetham critical of Labour

Press, 1 September 1980, Page 2

Mr Beetham critical of Labour

Labour Party allegations; of links 'between the Social Credit Political League "and the League of Rights have been criticised by the Social Credit leader, Mr. B. C. Beetham. /\. .. 1 ;■ I

The president of the Labour Party, Mr J. P. An-; derton, continued to make' anti-Semitic allegations: against Social Credit in clear! breach of the Race Relations; Act, he told delegates at the: league’s annual • conference at Lincoln College. Labour’s trying to . sup-i press Social' Credit support in the East Coast Bays byelection : :,by distributing a pamphlet containing antiSemitic implications about Social Credit showed that Labour had given up any challenge to -the National Party and was concerned solely with trying to ward off Social Credit.

The. reaction of the public to what Labour had done would be such that Social Credit could forget about Labour in the by-election and concentrate on challenging National.

; If the ‘‘increasingly Com-munist-infiltrated Labour Party” wanted to label any other party Fascist it should take a close look at National which, in a more subtle way, had also been attempting to smear Social CreditNational, like the governments of Queensland and South Africa, was treading the road of' closed, secret, dictatorial government and was increasingly supporting corporate monopoly control over capital and credit, as had occurred in Nazi Germany in the 19305.

f Mr Beetham criticised es-

pecially Government secrecy in energy matters and aluminium smelting. National had not been given a mandate in 1978 to move hell-bent into “this dangerously narrow area of extravagant expenditure, of both our natural and investment resources,” he said. National’s programme would convert the economy into a “trans-national dependency of Latin American variety with electricity resources turned into an energy milch cow to nourish internal monopolies and their multinational allies.”

Stopping only .for the enthusiastic applause, Mr Beetham outlined again Social Credit’s financial alternative, spoke about the plight of the South Island, and criticised the Government’s “socalled” industrial rationalisation.

He received a standing ovation from the 300-odd delegates, officials, and observers after his address.