MR LEE’S LAMENT

Grey River Argus, 24 July 1941, Page 2

MR LEE’S LAMENT

ON WAITEMATA RESULT. (P.A.) WELLINGTON, July 22. While frankly admitting that he was disappointed with the vote cast in the Waitemata by-election, the Leader of the Democratic Labour Party (Mr J. A. Lee, M.P.,) said in an interview to-day that the Party would continue to prepare for a General Election. "We will still light for New Zealand,’’ said Mr Lee. "Probably we would have been wiser to test the field when tne forces opposed to us were dispersed and not concentrated,” Mr Lee said. “Labour must have spent £l,OOO, ana for the first time to my knowledge paid workers 25s a day; but our cause is right. Our candidate was splendid, and we are girding our loins. We moved a little way up the front stairs, Labour a long way down. It is the old story of the new party coming .up the stairs and the old party going down. The Labour vote dropped by 40 per cent., and the Labour majority of 2,000 became a Labour minority of more than 1,000. Democratic Labour emerged with 900 odd votes, prepared to def”, fear for principle. The result in Waitemata is not calculated to help solve a single national problem. We live to fight again.” Speaking of the future, Mr Lee said the Dominion faced the certainty of a Labour defeat, or a triumpli for the National Party, led by Mr o. G. Holland, or of som'e sort of coalition. Whatever happened, the swing must go Left after the coalition or election. It would travel to the Left with greater pace after an election in which Mr Holland became Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Democratic Labour would, go ahead. When the suggestion was made to Mr Lee that the vote in the Waitemata by-election could not be accepted as a happy augury for Mr Lees retention of the Grey Lynn seat, he replied: “The election hearse will be so overcrowded with political corpses that there will not be room for me. Anyhow, a threatened man lives long.” He predicted that a number of Labour men would go to the pohtical cemetery at the election. The Labour Party can pile up a debt burden while betraying its pledges, can regiment a dwindling vote, can I lose its radicals, to the Left and its mass to the Right,” he said; but the day on which the debt structuie must be handled only comes nearer as the cure is delayed.’ Mr Lee said Labour had many Ipssons to learn from the last three by-elections since the 1938 General Election. Publicly, Labour was maKinu wild whoops of joy nt the Waitomata result. Privately -here woula be the shedding of copious tears. A brief glance of Auckland West, w'aipawa and Waitemata even after the fantastic borrowing Budget had Keen sugar-coated with a few good items, would show a huge swing away from Labour.