LABOUR PARTIES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 61, 15 March 1924, Page 3

LABOUR PARTIES

to the ir.ncp.. .' Su% —Dunns the last election, when the Revolutionary Socialists of New Zealand, claiming lor themselves the title of Labour Party, asserted that the views and aims of their leaders were identical with tnose-of the leaders of the Labour Party at Jlome in regard to loyalty, patriotism, service and Imperial, sentiment, I questioned this, whicn has proved subsequently so preposterous and so insupportable a contention. One does not carry the contentious spirit in politics beyond Election Day, and I should not at this juncture enter the lists and deal with these socalled Labour Parties but for the misconT w UO?, Of-i ny poetics contained in Mr. J- W. Davidson's letter to you ori Tuesday last. " ... 'J he great body of the working men o£ New Zealand are loyal, true, and patriotic British citizens. Probably 99 per cent, of the trades unionists in New Zealand are distant as the poles in their views on national and Imperial questions from the boeiahshe leaders of New Zealand as- is the average worker of England from the Bolsheviks of Russia. And the loyal British workmen rejected Mr. James Ramsay Mac Donald at Leicester, because they believed he favoured Germany. But that lesson, and the lesson of Russia under the autocracy of Lenin and Trotsky, made Mr. iUacDonald renounce his German and Karl Marxian learnings; and now on sulferance, or during good behaviour, Mr. Kamsay iMacDonald is Premier, of .England, enjoying the privileges and emoluj ments of office. /Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald is not a revolutionary Socialist. He had long ceased to have unpatriotic leanings' at the time of the General Election. He had reysnled of his pro-German utterances; and, just as he did towards the war latterly so he is now quite willing to carry on loyally and patriptically the King's Government.

My point during the General Election was that, the working men in New Zealand were not, like their leaders, avowed Revolutionary Socialists; and that the imported Parliamentary Labour Leaders , p,w ea'a"d were not, in patriotism and devotion to Empire, as loyal and patriotic as were the leaders of the Labour limy :n Great Britain. I cited such instances, as the Right Hon. J...R. Clynes, the^Rijfht Hon. Arthur Henderson, the Right Hon. J. H. Thomas, Mr. . Ben. liUett, and others, all leaders of Labour ! n England, and I failed to find among the Hollands, Frasers, or Thorns—conscientious objectors, shirkers, pacifists, or anti-conscriptionists— any such warwinning enthusiasts as these Labour Leaders in .Great Britain. Mr.. J. Ramsay .ViacUonald may be excused because of his conversion and repudiation of his disloyal utterances at the beginning of-the war, ■ but at Lossiemorith • where they know hi m better, he. has' not vet been forgiven. ■ " i.

Another point, the policy of the1 Parliamentary- Labour Party is against the best interests of the loyal and faithful worker m this country. One of the soundest of all social truths is that private^ property is the foundation of civilisation, and the extent of its distribution tiie mear - - of civilisation's stability and success. . .iat. .is the policy .of Liberalism. The policy of the Labour Party m New Zealand, .with its abolition o[ private property, its spirit of communism, its devotion to Lenin and his gang, who'were the destroyers of Church, fctate and Democracy in Russia, is not the policy of Liberal, minded statesmen "seeking the peace, welfare, and progress of-this country, and the safety, prosperity,' and integrity of the Empire. The Ramsay MacUonald Government did not send sympathy to Russia on the death of Lenin, and' that m itself marks the difference cetween tne so-called Labour Part v in New Zealand and the Labour Party a( Home.—l rru, etc..

ic .u L A- B- SIEVWRIGHT. 15th March.