THE CITIZENS’ ASSOCIATION.

Evening Star, Issue 22817, 27 November 1937, Page 15

THE CITIZENS’ ASSOCIATION.

to THE EDITOR. Sir, —As a former member of the Dunedin Citizens’ Association mid as one who had every intention of rejoining now that it has been reorganised upon sound lines, I must emphatically protest against the suggestion made by one of your correspondents to the effect that the association should approach Mr Cox urging him to become an independent candidate and stand for a further term as Mayor. The suggestion is ridiculous. Mr Cox gave up the ministry and hitched his wagon to the Labour star. Let him, therefore, be towed wherever the Labour star may drag him. _ If ho is dropped in the process, that is his lookout. If the Citizens’ Association chooses to support him for Mayor, a number of my friends and I will have nothing to do with it.—l am, etc., Indignant. November 26.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —The replies to the very, apposite remarks of His Worship the Mayor upon the pronouncements of the Citizens’ Association are mostly irrelevant. They fail to recognise the essence of Mr Cox’s indictment and the cause of his justifiable indignation. On the other hand, the term “ impudent nonsense ” is hardly' warranted. Conscious hypocrisy is almost a contradiction in terms; perhaps ingenuousness would better describe the subjective condition of these hard-headed business men. They claim and certainly wish to believe that their interests and their ideas of civic efficiency arc identical with those of the people generally. That is just what the Mayor denies and characterises as •“ impudent nonsense.” Let us put the matter in the form of a syllogism. AH political organisations exist for the purpose of promoting and defending some special, sectional, economic interest. The Citizens’ Association is a political organisation. Therefore it exists to promote the advantage of a special section of the community—the employing class. The Citizens’ Association hopes to achieve its purpose by obtaining and retaining in its hands the administrative machinery of _ the city of Dunedin. When the association ingenuously demands the “ nomination _ and election of men free from party bias,” it is really depleting the growing political consciousness or the people. Not party bias, but party bias in the wrong direction is anathema to them. Every intelligent person is affected by_ party bias to-day, and so long as society is divided into conflicting economic classes, it must continue to be so. But the Labour Council can rightly claim to represent the immediate needs of the great majority of the citizens and the ultimate needs of all—even the members of the Citizens’ Association itself; while the Citizens’ Association can only claim to represent the needs of a small section of the community. Even that claim is unjustified, because the political strategy and tactics of past conservatism, which the Citizens’ Association seeks to perpetuate, are no longer advantageous, but, on the contrary, distinctly dangerous to the employing class of the present day.—l am, etc., A. B. Powell, November 26.