Grey River Argus and Blackball News FRIDAY, MAY 26, 1922. THE EIAS OF MASSEYISM.

Grey River Argus, 26 May 1922, Page 4

Grey River Argus and Blackball News

FRIDAY, MAY 26, 1922. THE EIAS OF MASSEYISM.

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If once the New Zealand public became aware how much in cash, concessions, and privileges the interests behind the Massey Party disperse each i year secretly to keep the present monj eyed class Government in political powi er, there would be a veritable sensation. ! So much dragooning and doping of the public mind with a biased propaganda from press platform, pulpit, and post office, was never seen before. And it | is only one sort of dope that is purveyed, or that legally can be. Freedom in speech is a myth, but license in it ( is a sinister reality. Workers of all classes,- mental and physical, have to run the gauntlet of embargo, and censorships, whereas organisations like the Welfare League and the P.l’.A. can publish to their heart’s content matter that is calculated simply to create dissention and hate. Certain workingclass literature, like Anstey’s book ‘‘Red Eftropc” is barred, but secret sectarian circulars and imported literature of the morbid and even prurient order arc allowed to bo distributed with the quite obvious object of serving the political ends of the Reform Government. That being so, its easy to substantiate the charge that sedition in New Zealand is whatever the Government chooses to think dangerous to its own tenure of office. There is undoubted discrimination. Then, if some very -“advanced” piece of imported proletarian propaganda literature is discovered in the country, the Tory press, backed by Tory politicians, make a song about it, the hue and cry being raised with an eye to discrediting the New Zealand Labour movement. Certainly, it must be admitted that wage cuts, immigration, unemployment, poverty and social hardship now so general in the Dominion, have generated a temper of exasperation in many quarters, and the powers that be are afraid of the con- | ,sequences of their own policy, but sit I on the safety valve, yet do not scruple • to allow the widespread vilification of ' their political or class opponents by ■ whomsoever it may be that cares to i have a fling at them. If workers ex- ’ press openly an intention to counter J capital’s corners, pools, trusts, lock- ’•

outs, wage cuts, etc by selling their labour as dearly as possible, it is miscalled sedition. A strike may land a worker in the dock; but the Union Company, can charge any old freight it chooses, or middlemen may refuse to sell goods except at their own prices, and nothing is said about it. It is legally punishable, according to the Tory press, for anyone to suggest striking' on the job, but every farmer may refuse to grow wheat, or cattle, or to produce anything at all and that is defended as his inalienable right. If wheat is wanted, the land owner must be coaxed with subsidies to grow it. At a mere hint of all workers uniting in a trust on the job —the “go slow,” in short —there is a wail from Reformers who even say they object |o political strife, but the wool kings can corner the whole output, sell as they please, and the worst that may befall them is the benediction of Mr Massey or the P.P.A. It is no wonder workers all over the country an; to-day united as never before in the determination to hurl from powe rthe despotic and partizan oligarchy who misrule New Zealand in the name of freedom and faiiplay.