PARTY BEFORE THE STATE!

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 106, 31 October 1913, Page 6

PARTY BEFORE THE STATE!

His Majesty's Opposition! What means the phrase? The citizens may be puzzled when, they read the peculiar speech of that party's leader, Sir Joseph Ward, in the House of Representatives last evening. After a declaration that he was "on the side of maintenance of law and order," Sir Joseph made a rambling statement, on hearsay evidence, about the incident of Post Office-square. "I was assured," he said, "just upon coming in here, by a man who is president of one of the unions connected with the Waterside Union, that until this display of batons he was able to keep absolute peace among members of the union." The Opposition's Leader must be singularly unobservant if ho has not noticed that the alleged "absolute peace" of sections of the strikers since 22nd October has occasionally been exprcflacd j,n xicjgase a&g M»re&k|n&

Surely Mis Majesty's Opposition should take somo pains to be informed — by personal visits — of the state of affairs at the waterfront if the Liberals doubt the accuracy of the reports of their own local organ as well as the chronicles of other journals. Sir Joseph has either to confess to an unpardonable ignorance of developments at the waterside— or his judgment has been temporarily upset by the fear of giving an advantage to the Government by anything like a whole-heart-ed support of the Administration at a critical time when the suppression of lawlessness demands united action* by the people's elected representatives, lifted by the public need above the dusty and ignoble hollows of party politics and electioneering finesse. We do not directly accuse the Opposition's Leader of putting party before the State, but we do blame him for his injudicious words before he had certain knowledge of the facts, and we do say that his serious mistake or error exposes him to the charge that he was more concerned for a party advantage than for the welfare of the public. If he did not feel that tho circumstances required him to be generous in a guarantee of aid to the Government, he should have contented, himself with a plain and sane request for definite information about the Post Office affair before he ( delivered his lamentable homily, based on a partisan version. x Worse than Sir Joseph Ward's blunder i» the baseless allegation of his chief supporter, the New Zealand Times. This journal, which never scruples to make liberal use of its inventive faculty, has to-day broken its own remarkable re cord. Hero is & passage from an editorial to-day :— -"Our words were truthfully prophetic when we said the Government intended to sit idly by until the men had perpetrated acts' of violence that would put them beyond the pale: of human sympathy This was the policy. This was certainly what happened yesterday." Manifestly, for a, party purpose — what other motive is imaginable? — the Times has attempted deliberately to mislead the public. It has been well known to all— including the news staff of the Times — who have frequented the waterfront that the available numbers of police were a very thin blue line against a host which has displayed some ugly rush tactics. It has to be said to the Government's credit that it began early to make arrangements to increase the protective force, but it was only within the past two days that anything like the necessary quota wag obtained to put some awe into the persons who have tried to set up mob rule at this port. The apparent indifference of the public to its own danger waa another difficulty for the Government, but happily the citizens have been roused, and the promoters of terrorism will probably soon lose their arrogance. It is beyond dispute that at intervals since 22nd October mobs of strikers resorted to violence, without any provocation whatever from the^ police or other folk. Then, when force has to be employed to. restrain law-breakers and manhunters, it is absurdly said 5 that the strikers are being "incited." The attitude of the strikers, as deduced from the course of events during nine days, is that, provided the public agrees to rest its neck under the iron heel of a Strike Committee or a Red Federation autocracy, the public will not be kicked. If the Strike Committee, or its successor, is allowed to completely dominate the waterfront — forbidding the loading or unloading of cargo and stopping the business of the port— there will be "peace." Any effective measures to upset that arbitrary assumption of supreme authority at the wharves are an "incitement to violence," according to the strike leaders. The people have to be in possession of their wharves, and work them for the common good.