The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 1932. THE SESSION’S END.

Evening Star, Issue 21099, 11 May 1932, Page 6

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 1932. THE SESSION’S END.

The emergency session of Parliament came to an end with the halls of Legislature virtually in a state of siege, and with scenes of sabotage going on in tho streets of the capital city. For eleven weeks Parliament has been at work imposing taxation on an unprecedented scale, seeking to bring down a certain class of items in the cost of living, and remodelling the system of provision of relief for the unemployed. All this work has been done at high pressure, and not without a great deal of acrimony. Parliament is necessarily a slow-moving machine, and tho attempt to run it at a faster speed than the accustomed one has resulted in not a few hitches. The effort to collect additional revenue almost before the ink was dry on the new legislation authorising it has led to some confusion. And the attempt to provide additional relief, one suspects, has been hampered not only by lack of adequate preparation, but possibly by lack of ready money, pending receipt of the proceeds of the new levies for unemployment. Impatience has been brewing for some time among relief workers, who make few allowances lor those trying with diminished resources to cope with a situation altogether foreign to their experience. Unfortunately advantage has been taken of that impatience by that school of economic thought which is intent mainly on the overthrow of the capitalistic system. First of all there is the demand that the Government shall provide work for the workless. When a system is improvised as rapidly as possible, all possible fault is found with it, until there is the paradoxical development of relief workers’ strikes and the declaration of relief works as “ black.” Then follow demonstrations, attempts to overawe Ministers by numbers and lung ■ power, and finally displays of mob rule and destruction in tho cities, which have to be quelled by force and end with the arrest of a small proportion of the participants.

It cannot bo denied that Communism has been making converts in the dominion, and that there is an organised attempt to manipulate unemployment for the ends of Communism. The great bulk of the unemployed command sympathy for having forced on them against their will a body of insurgents who make things doubly difficult for the Government, for the unemployed, for citizens’ committees, and for the community generally. The Government has so far refused to be browbeaten, but surely some intervention is needed so that the unemployed may not be liable to be tyrannised or inflamed into connection, near or remote, with methods from which their sense of citizenship revolts. The more unsettled business becomes because of outbreaks such as our chief cities have lately experienced, the less likelihood is there of any turn in the tide of employment which would restore relief workers to their former jobs in private enterprise. This argument must appeal to the great bulk of the unemployed, but we know it does 1 not appeal to the Communists, because a return to prosperity on the old basis

would mean the frustration of their hopes of that world revolution to which they are committed. At this juncture the Government needs the hacking of all—of Parliament, of its own public servants, and of the community. It is difficult to know precisely where the Opposition stands. It is no secret that there is a great gulf between sane Labour and the Communists. The Parliamentary Labour Party is seeking to extend its influence further than what is known as the working classes and to embrace small farmers and many town workers who have not hitherto supported Labour. While seeking this it makes tho task of carrying on the affairs of the country as best as may be in the meantime as near to impossible as one can imagine. This line of action has involved such seeming community of purpose with Communist agitators on occasions when trouble has developed that there is excuse for concluding that Labour members are running with tho hare and hunting with the hounds. There is also Labour’s full exploitation of disaffection in the Public Service to add to tho Government’s difficulties. It has been keenly resented, not only by the Government and its supporters inside and outside Parliament, but by very many members in tho Public Service itself. To make the Public Service a party-political battleground is to do a disservice to the State. commend to the public servants—to all readers, indeed—the speech in which Mr Downie Stewart rebuked the Labour Party for its complicity in this business, and in general for playing on the passions of the people.