LABOUR'S OPPONENTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 65, 14 September 1943, Page 7

LABOUR'S OPPONENTS

ATTACK BY MR. R. M CKEEN

"Yod will have noticed the tremendous number of candidates, with all sorts of labels, in the present campaign—it is all done with the purpose of frustrating the return of the Labour Government," said "Mr. R. McKeen, Labour candidate for Wellington South, when attacking opponents of the Government at a meeting at Island Bay last night. They were, he said, trying to attract votes from the Labour Party.

The record of the Labour Government during the past eight years had been such that the vested interests were going to all sorts of pains to oust it. They had no possible hope of doing it. Referring particularly to the Democratic Labour Party, he said this party was formed almost at the last moment when an election was decided on. "They are a political rabble," said Mr. McKeen. "Prior to that they had no co-operation among themselves. They formed branches and then disbanded, and they started criticising each other throughout the country, with Lee coming in for the hottest criticism. There are a large, number of disgruntled Labourites in the Dominion who left the movement because they felt they could' not get their own way and 'because the country wasn't socialised.'"

The speaker claimed that Democratic Labour and Independents were combined with the National Party. Mr, Holland recently said that the National Party was seeking to become the Government and that Lee was going to help it. In the House Lee was invited by the National Party to speak in the electorates because Lee was better able to carry out invective criticism of the Government. The other candidates were out to unseat Labour by hook or by crook," and this was one of the means they were using. The National candidate, Mr. Toop, had sold out the People's Movement to the National Party. "As chairman of the People's Movement, Me* Toop said that the National Party was tending towards totalitarianism," said Mr. McKeen. "Now, as that party's candidate, he says the Labour Government will bring about a servile State. He now expounds the tenets of the National Party and is one of the howling pack that is after the Labour Government."

Mr. McKeen defended the Government's efforts to ameliorate the housing position. .He said that Labour had come in for a lot of criticism on this question, but he wanted to point out that prior to the war the Government had built over 15,000 houses. The Government had to take the job on because private enterprise had absolutely failed. Many people overlooked the fact that war demands came first and continued to come first, and it was difficult tb get any civil building done at all. Housing was still in the forefront of the Government's programme and to that end it was training tradesmen , and paying them while they learned.