MORE POLITICAL HECKLING.

Evening Star, Issue 22892, 25 February 1938, Page 8

MORE POLITICAL HECKLING.

The New Zealand Labour Party has no affiliations with Communism, and, to ,do it justice, it has emphatically rejected overtures made to it that the forces should be joined. It is probably true also that the political feeling among some of the party’s more aggressive members stops short at adherence to an extreme form of Socialism. Yet there are times when the behaviour of a section of Labour supporters gives rise to the suspicion that a singleness of purpose characteristic of Soviet methods is being used to fight the forthcoming election campaign. An election, as any up-to-date dictionary informs us, may be defined as the “ action of choosing for an office, dignity, or position, usually by vote.” Other phrases mentioned in connection with it are “ exercise of deliberate choice” and “ faculty of discriminative selection.” The vociferous heckling of National Party candidates, however, even at this very early stage in the campaign, is indicative of the fact that at least a proportion of Labour followers have made up their minds that, as far as they see the position, there should be no choice or power of selection. Only one side of the political argument is to be listened to. Perhaps they would be willing to go to the length of giving their approval to the farcical type of election organised last year in Russia, where voting for the Communistic regime amounted to an order to be carried out as a matter of course.

In the opinion of some it may be “ good fun ” or “ sound tactics ” so to disturb a political meeting that the views of a Nationalist speaker cannot be clearly heard. But such conduct is not the traditional British interpretation of fair play. A contrast to the atmosphere- of the Holland-Hargest addresses in Dunedin was provided when Mr P. Neilson, a,Labour member, spoke to the electors. Mr Neilson was given an attentive hearing, only one interjection being heard. So persistently are Labour “ gags ” now being applied to any speaker whose remarks are not expected to please Government supporters that people who give the matter intelligent thought will inevitably come to the conclusion that Labour supporters are conscious of shortcomings in their party’s administration and are beginning to doubt whether the Government will emerge successfully from the clear analysis of its policy, as expounded by Opposition members. For Labour there is danger in these displays of bad taste. Electors with any sense of judgment will not easily be swayed in the direction of supporting a party whoso adherents are given to senseless interjecting shorn of that saving grace, old-time wit. On the whole, Mr Holland managed to gain a better hearing than Mr Hargest, but there is still ample reason why the Labour Party leaders, in their own interests, should make an appeal for sane and just conduct on the part of their followers.