OPPOSITION LEADER

Grey River Argus, 8 April 1942, Page 4

OPPOSITION LEADER

RESENTS CRITICISM

BY LABOUR PARTY EXECUTIVE

[Per Press Association.] CHRISTCHURCH, April 7. ■' Mr S. G. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, commenting on the report of the Labour Party to the annual conference said: “The charge that I and others associated with me in Parliament have never lost an opportunity of creating political disunity with all the venom and viciousness at their disposal is nothing less than a political slander. A more untruthful account of wartime activities of the opposition has never been framed. The report was endorsed unanimously by the ‘Yes-Man’ conference, and that is all the more disgraceful, because the Prime Minister, who was present, knew tnat the executive was throwing dust in the eyes of the delegates. No one knew better than the Prime Minister that the charge made was atrocious political humbug on the part of the men who were determined that their elect politically should retain office, and absolute control, and despise offers of others to assist in the conducting of an ‘all-in’ war effort.’’

The public knew, he said, that failure to create a National Government was solely the responsibility of the Labour Party. Ail members of Parliament knew that Mr 1 Fraser was personally in favour of united conduct of the war effort, but that he was restrained from carrying his convictions into action by influences inside and outside the Parliamentary Party. “The travesty of truth perpetuated by the Executive of the Labour Party in framing its report to the conference has raised another obstacle to the Prime Minister bringing about the formation of a National Government, which he knows, deep in his heart, would assist in more vigorous and 100 per cent, prosecution of the war effort. While Cabinet exhorts everybody else in the community to make sacrifices, its individual members, backed by a coterie which for big industrial labour, are not prepared to make any sacrifices politically to ensure that the Dominion gives of its maximum war effort, ’ said Mr Holland. Before and after his assuming leadership of the National Party he had consistently and openly and without qualifications urged the Government to have an “all-in’’ government for the duration of the war. The record of the National Party to secure unity was known to all, but those politically blind at the Labour Conference would not see through a poisonous smoke screen set up by the Party’s executive.