WHAT INFLUENCE?

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 119, 22 May 1941, Page 11

WHAT INFLUENCE?

ELECTION RESULT

WELLINGTON INCIDENT

OUTSIDE OPINIONS

In the various conclusions being

drawn from the results of the local

body elections the extent to which an unusual happening during the

campaign in Wellington affected the outcome generally is given some consideration. With this the question of "Trades Hall control" is

also raised in some quarters. m

Discussing grounds for the antiLabour vote the "Timaru Herald" states: "The Parliamentary Labour Party may argue that a protest has been entered against the system which enables an unjustifiable proportion of Trades Union secretaries to offer themselves for election to local bodies. The recent incident in Wellington may have had its repercussions throughout the country. While on this point it is worth noting that Mr. H. L. Nathan gained a seat on the Wellington Harbour Board, which was more than two Labour members of Parliament were able to do. The Government, however, cannot-escape comfortably by suggesting that the protest of the electors was simply made against the eagerness of Trade Union secretaries for personal advancement. If the election results were to be explained on this ground at all, they would have to be interpreted as a sign that the public has understandable fears of the system of Trades Hall control of civic administration." "DISTURBING REVELATION." "The whole country wants first things first," states the "Manawatu Evening Standard.'- "but it has seen, notwithstanding the fact that we: are at a supreme crisis in our history, the process of socialisation continued with aggressive action by union officials in many ways. Not the least disturbing revelation was the Nathan incident in Wellington which must. < have had a tremendous effect upon, the voting there. Autocracy, in fact, has displaced democracy in certain trade union circles and there is an evergrowing resentment against this tendency, vyhich denies to the public the right of a free opinior. and criticism." In giving as a reason for the swing from Labour the suspicion that the real | power of Government has shifted from J Parliament to the Trades Hall, the j "Nelson Mail" states: "Many good i unionists must have voted on Saturday j in a way that would show their 'dis- | approval of the high-handed tyranny which union officials are more and more seeking to exercise. The average, person can see that those are the Hitlerian methods we are fighting against." Mention is made in comment by the "Taranaki News" that. "at Wellington a recent incident in which a candidate for the Harbour Board, Mi'- H. L. Nathan, was visited and allegedly threatened by prominent officials of a political party, undoubtedly exercised a strong influence on the voting, and it is possible that public objection to such conduct was echoed in other centres outside Wellington and found expression in the voting."

"The Labour Government of 1941 is not the Labour Government of 1936," the Christchurch "Press" states. "A bold, energetic Cabinet-, certain (and at times disastrously certain) of the course it was steering, has become a not very homogeneous group of ageing politicians, increasingly incapable of making decisions, garrulously evasive on most policy issues, and increasingly deferential to the small group of trade union leaders which controls the Labour Party and the Federation of Labour."

"Municipal elections are influenced strongly by personal considerations, by local incidents, by the efficiency or otherwise of party organisations, and by a dozen other factors," states the Christchurch "Star-Sun," "It is not possible to doubt that voting in all the cities was influenced in the first place by a universal demand for economy in local administration and in the second by a growing resentment against the part played by the Trades Hall and the labour union secretaries.

. . . Trades Hall control, which makes the Labour candidate answerable to a secret and highly class-conscious Labour caucus in the background, probably had most to do with the remarkable turnover of votes in every centre of New Zealand. Many voters have seen only the effects of the system without linking them with the causes. They have seen waste and extravagance, over-staffing, petty patronage and patronage not so petty practised from the very moment of Labour's accession to office. They have heard from Wellington of threats against a political opponent. They have had experience of many unworthy stratagems in party warfare, such as the breaking of the party truce that was made for the duration of the Prime Minister's absence from New Zealand. But, above all, they have detected more than an undercurrent of indifference in local administration to the Empire's responsibilities in the crisis of war."