SINISTER THREATS

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 August 1929, Page 2

SINISTER THREATS

IF LABOUR WINS ELECTIONS.

SYDNEY, July 24.

Addressing a meeting of National supporters at Neutral Bay last night, Mr. R. W. D. Weaver, Minister for Mines and Forests, in referring to the timber strike, said:

“Mr. Garden, secretary of the Trades and Labour Council, has declared that when Labour returns to power every member of the police force who did the duty detailed to him in the present industrial crisis will be penalised. The police perform so great, so vital, and so valuable a public service that it has hitherto been regarded as beyond political interference. And when Mr. Lang, the leader of the Laboui' party, is asked whether Garden’s threat of victimisation of the police force represents the official view of Labour in New South AVale, Mr. Lang has nothing to say. If Mr. Lang condemns the activities of the basher gang he will fall out with Garden and Company and the militant section of his supporters. If, on the other hand, he says yea to their bashing methods, he will be in conflict with the moderate supporters. Consequently he sits on a rail and the basher gang continues to bash some of the constituents of this State who are alleged to be free and liberty-loving electors. “But it will be a sorry day for this country when we allow the police force to become the football of political parties—to be threatened and intimidated by political bashing gangsters, or to be victimised by Governments just because they did their duty in maintaining the law, which is the only real safeguard of the liberty and security of all the people all the time, in this or in any other country. “Intimidation of the police force cannot be permitted to go unchallenged by the people of New South Wales, whose security rests' on their immunity from political reprisals. If the system of reprisals is to be instituted, 'then every public servant whose duty causes him to act contrary to the policy of the red raggers, will be victimised^—when Labour comes into power. Then the policeman who is called upon to preserve law and order —the magistrate who is called upon to try cases having a political complexion—the warder .who is called upon to control prisoners who are well known to the Labour party—the judge who is called upon to pass sentence upon plotters against society, whose deeds of violence may perchance be in line with anarchist, syndicalist, or Communist philosophy—will find they are to be punished for upholding the law, by the political friends of the lawless.

Think what the effect would be upon the morale of the people, if our public servants knew that their actions were to be governed neither by law nor justice, but by political considerations. “Then, indeed, public probity would be dethroned and “cupidity”—the ugly off-spring of political patronage—would sit grinning in high places, an open declaration to all that under the patronage of Labour, justice can be delayed, can be denied, or can be purchased, notwithstanding all the proud declarations of Magna Charta to the contrary.”