MAYORAL OFFICE

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 26, 31 January 1923, Page 9

MAYORAL OFFICE

1 10 IHB EDITOR. Sir, —Your news article in Saturday 1! , issue with the headings "Mayoral Office; Selecting Candidates; Keeping Minority ■ Labour Out," is, in my opinion, jusfe the kind of thing that will "put the Labour Mayor in." This bogey, which was used so consistently during' the recent Parliamentary Election, andjieeded! so little by the electors, is now to be used at. the coming municipal elections, and I venture to suggest will meet with a similar result. What right, I ask, has any section of the community, except a majority of the.electors, to ."keep Labour out," for it is a fact that the majority of the citizens of Wellington are labourers or workers, of one kind or another, and with our universal adult franchise, it would, be only in keeping with true . proportional representation, principles to elect a workers' representative as Mayor. I have no doubt that on a 1 straight-out fight between Labour and anti-Labour the former; -'would • win, provided it puts up the right man and puts as much ginger into the electisn as it put into the Parliamentary election. It k surely', a wide stretch of imagination to imply that a" Labour representative could not be fqund who' would safeguard the finances of the city equally with the present or any past Mayor of Wellington. I think the few in "some quarters" who have abrogated to themselves the right to select the capital city's Mayor, and ..are considering the question of "how best to keep a Labour nominee out of the office, might find that they have.reckoned- without their 1 host, when the nuni- . bers go ud. and that the-bogey of "revolutionary Labour" and "Disloyalty" is a pure myth, put forward for the sole purpose of throwing dust in the eyes of the electors and scaring them into voting for those who represent rings, trusts, combines, and other, similar interests. With me loyalty to King and Empire is paramount, and revolution, which means reforms by force, repugnant and unthinkable,- and I would positively refuse to either write or speak in favour of any manor body of men whom I believed to be either revolutionary or disloyal, yet with y a perfectly ■■ clear conscience I am able to warn the municipal electors against the scare which the interested few are apparently working up with the object of preventing Labour, from holding the chief magistracy of this fair city. I have been a 'Mayor of one of our boroughs, and I know of nothing which a Mayor has authority to do which could not be well entrusted to a Mayor elected as a representative of •■ Labour. What the city needs is the best man for Mayor, whether he. be v a representative of Labour or of any othersection of the community. This continual howl against Labour and baseless charges of "revolutionary and disloyal" can only be looked upon by fair and inrpartial-minded people as a stern realisation of their ever-increasing strength, and a resort to unfair methods for the sole purpose of checking their quite natural advance. I aasert. that it is high time the facts were boldly faced; and I make the beginning.—l am. etc., 1. W. M'DONALD. 27th January.