MR. COMBS AT BELMONT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 77, 28 September 1938, Page 21

MR. COMBS AT BELMONT

The Community Hall, Belmont, was well filled last night when Mr, H. E. Combs, Labour candidate for Wellington Suburbs, continued his campaign. Mr. D. Hargreaves was in the chair, and at the close of his address a motion of thanks and confidence in the candidate as a fit and proper representative in Parliament was carried unanimously on the motion of Mr. Dimond.

The address followed the lines of those previously reported, but Mr. Combs emphasised the association of the Nationalist Party with the so-called independent political organisation which jhad sprung up in the last few months. The Freedom League was rapidly being reduced to a professor with a large salary; the Constitutional League had faded out, and the Tell New Zealand League had such a preponderance of Nationalist supporters that no one was in the least surprised when the Hon. A. Hamilton was galled in to give it his blessing. These leagues and bogies as to Socialism and so forth were the Nationalists' stock-in-trade. They served no useful purpose, and any hopes the Nationalists had in them were ill founded, for.the people were thinking hard these days They had had hard times in the Coalition Government's time and they had noted that the Rt. Hon. G W. Forbes, one of their leading figures, had told New Zealand that, under like circumstances of the slump periri and given the same opportunities, he would do again what he did then. The Labour Party was determined to shield the people against bad times. They would see that they were fed, clothed, and sheltered, and that any margin available after this was done would be distributed so that' they could enjoy a share of the amenities of life.