LABOUR PARTY'S COMMENT

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 6, 8 January 1925, Page 8

LABOUR PARTY'S COMMENT

> Commenting on ; the. Communists as outlined above, Mr. Walter Nash, secretary of, the. New Zealand Labour Party, stated this afternoon that persons desiring to. become members of the Labour Party .were required to agree to support the objective, platform 'and principles of the parj,y. The principles upon which the party worked were those of education and understanding. The methodß adopted were propaganda in all directions, with a view to placing the platform before the electors, «o as to induce them to vote for the party's candidates'at Parliamentary and local elections. The party recognised that the social problems of New Zealand will only be solved by the ec-operation of all the people. The candidates at Parliamentary, elections were pledged to the platform, as submitted at the election, and the members elected will'endeavour by the usual Parliamentary procedure to so amend or 1 add to .the laws that the various reforms recited in the platform might become the laws of the Dominion. In short, the party; believed in educating and convincing 'the ' people, subject to the laws,.of the necessity for change, rather than the imposition of new laws, and new methods without consent. ■"' v ' . ' .

.The niethod of selecting candidates lor Parliamentary elections is ultra-de-.niocratic, declared Mr. Nash. "Any six members may nominate any other member for the approved list. The nominee mrat have been a financial member of the party for six months prior to nomination. The nomination toon is then forwarded to the National Executive for consideration, after which it ,m order, the name is entered on the lisV of approved candidates. If no obif£- arf. raised within three montlis of publication the nominee is eligible to enter a selection ballot for any constituency m the Dominion. If nominatherself **"&?* ««: candidate pledges dples °h hlmself to support the principles and pohcy o f the Party if select-

<f THE; OPEN MIND. "The prime essential of progress is the open mmd, and the.Labour Party offere every facility, for the expression of opinion 1 at its meeting, and at its conterences;. ■: It welcomes new ideas, but

when the Party's representatives have determined by majority that certain methods are the best for the attaining o£ social justice it requires loyalty to those methods, until they are altered by the usual constitutional method. The party desires the - co-operation of all people to attain, this end, '. in.what it considers -the best means—the way of education. There may be other sincere members of society who desire the same ; end, but who suggest different means of attaining it. If so, the Labour Party as at present constituted cannot work with them, and if their methods tend to handicap the-work of the Party the most sensible thing to do is to ask them to leave it "