JUDGED BY COMPANY AND LEADERSHIP

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 138, 9 December 1919, Page 6

JUDGED BY COMPANY AND LEADERSHIP

In Labour's best Australian days, when tho party ef Fisher and Hughes and Hclman stopd for national ideals, an elector who, voted Labour took something of a risk. The risk consisted of the everpresent Red tail—an active minority with an energy 'that sometimes counter-bal-anced weight of numbers, with a genius for the political bossing pf party machines, and with a machine at hand superior to that of any other party. As time passed on, the threat that the tail would wag the dog steadily increased) and the prospects of Labour as a democratic pai'ty relatively declined. Arrived then the war, to put national 'feeling to the supreme test.;, and the residt was the splitting of the party, precipitated by military compulsion. - In pre-war days the anti-national section of Australian Labour, combined with the Prussian efficiency of the political organisation, had appeared, we repeat, as a risk; but in war-time it manifested itself as a positive danger, Before the war Australia trusted Fisher and Hughes to establish the Com-, mpnwealth Bank, and tie effort resulted in perhaps the finest specimen, ef State banking extant. But the Queensland State-trading ef Ryan belongs to a quite different categcry, and the Labour Party of Ryan and Tudor stands far apart from the pld Labour Party of Fisher and Hughes. Though, from the machinery point of view, the organisation may not have greatly altered, its subjection to the anti-nationalists, previously a contingency, became during the war a fact. And to-day the danger arising from capture of the Labour machine by the Reds is understood in Australia as never before.

In New Zealand at this moment the domination of the Official Labour Party by extremists is no mere risk; it is a fact. Both in the control of the machine, and in tho Hpuse itself, the leading voices are the voices of revolutionaries who are thinly coated with democratic paint, but whose past is more convince ing than their present. Under its statesmanlike leadership of seven or eight years ago, a vote'cast for Australian Labour - would not have, been a vote for tho most extreme things in the Labour programme, or, for virulent machine politics. But. both these results are concomitants pf a vote cast in New Zealand on 17th Deceinbev for that Official Labour. Party whose bright particulai_it__is_ari_a^owed Bolshevik,. and_wl\ose_lc_adei-_or_ sp_okesman" is the inimitable-Mr,_._plhwd_-3n_X.is-iti-alia, before the educating events of-the war period, a (lemperat might reasonably have given a vote for a Labour Party ballasted with a Fisher, or a Hughes, or a Banian. In New Zealand to.o>y, t>alla»t and balance ava bpth conspicuous by Miei* absentia j imd what ms-y be tenaei

the ideals of the "Wprker" organ, which did not sway the Australian Labour Gov-ernmellt:s>.._--.-t__ePr_rmQ_, Men ..are knojmi by the company they keep, ar>.d particularly-by—thß-leadera-that they follow.- -If-6or"Offieial~'Lajbour in New Zealand is indelibly branded.

Unde_Esh©r--<a^sgh£s.___ol_an, a ,_L?.p.„!*l_«-.__^^^ w.b_h.a.vflte,.;pa^_^.or^bfii^_^p_t_ir_J Jartly on their own merits, partly oil 'gramme-* ~'Undec.go]J fl nd and Fraser_a.rid _§_p]e.i..__k. MPrij,eith_aiid_ Croskery' are s dangerous propositions, and we advise"t!7e' -voters-to--figh^^y--qf^^eTrrr--Ha4 a strong independent Labourite like Veiteh been offering in this district, he would have been worth firs.fc place in more than one of the seven electorates grouped round the Empire City; but as all the L.abpur candidates are machined and standardised and Hollandised, we hope that no*; one. qf them srill enter Parliament. They are part and parcel of an organisation dominated by extreme aims and methods; they offer no compensating quality of special ability or independence of character; their ejection would help to promote the worst fo*m of machine politics, unredeemed by wise leadership. On its merits, La-hour ought to secure at least one, ppssiply two, of tho seven seats; but, not, we hope, this brand of Labour. Any satellite of Holland and Company is''unworthy of the support pf a sincere deroocrat. If dempcratic voters apt on that principle, there is a chance that the Oflipial Labour Party may hs reformed aj; t,he top. But success of its candidates on 17th December would stereotype the party on its present lines, and 'would confirm, perhaps irrevocably, its present condition of moral inyersjpn.