“BADLY DISAPPOINTED.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 13 November 1925, Page 2

“BADLY DISAPPOINTED.”

LABOUR AND THE ELECTION. •‘BOGS, BUTTER-FAT, WHISKERS! y THE TWO 1 IDOLS OF AUCKLAND NORTH. “We. have not come here to condole with one another, but lor the purpose of starting a new fight,” was the burden of several speeches by Labour candidates, successful and unsuccessful, in the Strand Theatre at Auckland, However, there was a subdued' air about the proceedings, and most of the speakers acknowledged that they had been badly disappointed on Wednesday when the figures went up. “I begin to think there ought to be a new song, ‘Just After the Battle, Mother,’ ” remarked Mr. R. F. Way, the defeated candidate for Parnell. •‘Anyhow, we got a thorough good hiding, and I do not know that it will not do us a lot of good.” The audience greeted this remark with some applause. Other speakers followed in a similar strain, even Mr. J. A., Lee (Auckland East) taking a quieter tone. In quite another vein were the remarks'of Mr. A. S. Richards, the defeated Labour candidate for Marsden. “I have just been spending six weeks among bogs, butter-fat, whiskers, and mortgagehold,” lie said. Mr. Richards appeared to have left the fid Id of battle with a mixture of contempt and dislike for the northern dairy farmer. He described himself as “the leader of a gallant 800 boys of the north,” and asserted that whereas there had been no Labour organisation in Marsden before his campaign, he had left a solid compact body of fighters, consisting of 827 men and women who had voted for him. “The Reformers in the north are swollen with the infection of Coatesitis,’ ” he said. “There are two idols in the north—His Lordship Gordon Coates, the saviour of mankind, and Mr. Murdoch, who has been overthrown. Tlie average cocky in the north is not an intelligent human being in the ordinary sense of the word, but a land serf.” Mr. Richards-ironically described the arrival of the Prime Minister at Kaipara Flats (inhabited mostly by flats) on the tail end of a passenger train—the most appropriate way, because it indicated where .be would finally be in politics. . Twenty-seven fanners, lie remarked, clad mostly in rags and dirt, had gathered humbly l round Mr. Coates, had presented him with what purported to be a testimonial, and had asked him to allow them some metal “biickshee” to fill up a boghole in one of their roads. Mr. Coates had merely laughed, and said. “I would advise you to get all yon can ‘buckshee.’ Yon will need it iii the backblocks.” In places inhabited only by the Maori, kiwi bird, and dog, he had seen large portraits of Mr. Coates issued by "the Reform' Party. Everywhere in the north people were afraid to be associated publicly with Labour: They feared that some stock agent would see them and tell the mortgagee. They were afraid "tlic Labour candidate had bombs in his pocket. One newspaper had refused to print a line about Labour meetings except for payment “Russia under the Czars was mild compared to the suppression and oppression in the north,” declared Mr. Richards in conclusion, “but I am glad that I knocked the Nationalist in the wind-bag so that he will never recover again.”