The Dominion MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1932. "COMMUNITY CONSCIOUSNESS"

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 49, 21 November 1932, Page 8

The Dominion MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1932. "COMMUNITY CONSCIOUSNESS"

With a byelection impending in Motueka, >t may be °PP° r ““5 f tXSer ,he electors recognise how far apart are these two e “ ta ’^ tud { eS a d Parliament and politicians lately have been the : übjec a de-il of public criticism. Most of it reduces itself to the simple state ment°tfegMators are inclined to think too much 0 tar conmunityPconsciousness is as much an expression of class-consciousness as is the Labour Party’s political mentality and declared policy. It was something altogether different that Mr. Ramsay Mac Dona d had in his mind when he wrote in the represents the outlook of those members of the British Labour Party who support the National Government: It is now a good many years ago (he said) since I put community con•cionsness as against class consciousness as the rock upon which our move piousness as agam.r. propagandist to promise financial S‘l. “» g”e /»» were be In It. and t» unnleasant actions which he knows someone must take though he con "ratulates himself that he has shirked that responsibility.. That is all of the stuff of which the painted pasteboard of sham politics is made. Weie these politicians to be called into office to-morrow the reasons which forcing lower standards to-day would be immediately strengthened.. The foregoing recalls a recent incident when members of the Labour Party in our own Parliament drew upon themselves the suggestion of political motive when they asked for the removal, at considerable cost to the country, of the Excise Duty on New Zealandgrown tobacco. Motueka is a tobacco-growing district, and in the light of this fact that the speakers were accused of endeavouring to make capital out of the by-election. u i j It is interesting to note what Mr. MacDonald had to say on this very point. Referring to the results of two byelections in which the Labour opposition candidates were returned by small majorities, he remarked that these elections “make the timorous fear that the national effort is ending. The very strength of the Government gives these, by-elections a false appearance. But, though in two instances the Opposition has won seats, it. has done so with increases of votes so insignificant that it must be plain to everyone that reckless promises to spend money and increase taxation have little political effect. Even the distressed have too much practical commonsense and can reflect too sanely upon facts to rise to that appeal. Since the Coalition Government assumed office in this country the Labour Party has preferred to engage in destructive rather than constructive criticism. Its leaders have declared that if the Party were in office they would solve the country’s problems, but they have never told us, except in vague general terms, how they would set about it. “It is the greatest weakness of British Socialism to-day,” declares Mr. G. D. H. Cole, himself a member of the British Labour Party, in an observation in point, “that it has not hitherto succeeded in looking competent to carry out the tasks which it has set itself out to accomplish. It has fumbled, and has seemed, far more confident in its denunciations of the existing order than in its adumbrations of the future.”

Mr. Cole might have been, writing of our own Labour Party, whose candidate is fighting the Motueka by-election in exactly the same way. There is little hope for this country except through the abandonment of faction and class-consciousness. Parliament and Government can only pull us through if they stand together and work in a spirit of community consciousness.