ONE-WAY FREEDOM

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 66, 15 September 1943, Page 4

ONE-WAY FREEDOM

No more astonishing and disturbing statement has been made during the election campaign than that of Mrs. Dreaver, Labour candidate for Waitemata, regarding what she called sabotage in the Public Service. "There are people in Government Departments who are not Labour," she said, "and who are. sabotaging our effort. They cannot always be civil to the public. When they are engaged, we know nothing of their politics, but we know them and are watching them. Where we find this, these people will find a job with some other employer." What Mrs. Dreaver plainly means—and there has been no refutation of her statement by responsible Ministers—is that any civil servant who dares to hold opinions which do not accord with Labour principles is to be regarded as an enemy of the party and in danger of dismissal. And this by a party which for years has preached the gospel of political freedom in the Civil Service! Obviously Labour's idea of political freedom, as revealed by Mrs. Dreaver, is freedom to support the Labour Party and no other. Under the Political Disabilities Removal Act of 1936 civil servants were given the right to stand for Parliament. One, a private secretary to a Minister of the Crown, is exercising that right in an Auckland constituency. But he has chosen to enrol under the Labour banner and is apparently in no danger should the fortunes of the poll go against him. In view of Mrs. Dreaver's unrefuted statement it is reasonable to ask what would happen to a civil servant who chose to stand in opposition to the Labour Party or even to a civil servant who dared to ask awkward questions of Government candidates at election meetings.