THE H.B. TRIBUNE. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1922. OFFICIAL LABOUR’S GAG.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 300, 7 December 1922, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1922. OFFICIAL LABOUR’S GAG.

It may be worth while, even at this late hour, to draw particular attention to the Auckland message, appearing in another column of this issue, giving a brief description of the happenings at Mr. A. E. Glover’s final pre-election meeting. In the Hawke’s Bay and neighbouring districts the campaign has, on the whole, been conducted, by both speakers and audiences, with a marked restraint and orderliness upon which we may congratulate ourselves. There have, of course, been on occasion the casual interruptions and interjections that are inseparable from assemblies of the leind, that are, in fact, looked for and, on the part of skilled and experienced speakers, welcomed as lending animation to the proceedings. But in the larger centres of population there has been in evidence a spirit of quite a different type, in short, set attempts at preventing the speaker from delivering his speech. An outstanding instance of this was provided last week when the Prime Minister, Mr. Massey, delivered his address in Christchurch. Although in the end it was made quite obvious that by very far the majority of those who attended came, there to listen to what he had to say and judge him and his party accordingly, and that a like majority was with him at tho finish, still there was there a relatively small section whose function it was to smother his voice and break up the meeting. Any man of less robust courage, determination, and lengthy experience than Mr. Massey might very easily have been overwhelmed by these tactics: He, however, was quite equal to the

emergency, and wound up by receiving al the conclusion of his speech an ovation in which hundreds of his political opponents joined, largely to mark their dissent from the treatment accorded him and their appreciation of the manner in which he had met it.

Reports of similar exhibitions, not of mere rowdiness due to momentary excitement arising from the occasion,- but from an evident preconcerting, may be found in the newspapers of practically every big centre. Nor can there be any doqbt as to the quarter from which this obstruction came. It came from supporters of the Official Labour Party, who no doubt thought they wefe doing their own candidates a service by preventing the others from giving a connected presentation of their views. The particular incident to which to-day’s message refers provides one of the best of many available proofs of this. The contest for the Auckland Central seat is confined to two aspirants for it, Mr. W. E. Parry, the si >ing member and the nominee of Official Labour, and Mr. A. E. Glover, who is standing as an Independent with Mr. Wilford’s benediction on his candidature. There can thus be no possible doubt as to whence came the organised effort—which in this case seems to haVe met with a large measure of success —to stop the proceedings. Beyond this, in this particular instance, the man who dared to oppose Official Labour in one of its strongholds is himself pre-emin-ently a man of the people, and one who, both as a parliamentary representative ( and as a city councillor, has always studied and very materially furthered the interests of the workers. In fact, he may be said to have been the first declared repre .tentative that they had on the Auckland City Council, and an active one at that. This, however, availed him nothing jvhen he had the temerity to come forward in opposition to the Red nominee.

There is something quite sinister enough in these demonstrations of the followers of the Red flag, and the possibilities of their development in other directions. But what is to be said of their political leaders, not one of whom throughout the whole Dominion wotild appear to have raised his voice in protest against these attempts at “revolution by force”? ( It might surely have been expected that such champions of “freedom of speech”—even when it may bo seditious and disloyal—would have 'lft least issued a warning to their followers at such a time. Their silence on the subject gives us something of a good notion as fo what would happen were they placed in control of the country. It is at once recognised that the section of Labour that thus discovers itself is a comparatively small one, even in the aggregate. But it is the section which is allowed to give colour to the whole Labour movement, whether political or industrial, and to which politicians bearing the hall-mark of Official Labour have to submit, as they would fain have the rest of us subjected to it. Why is it that the great body of moderate Labour does not assert itself, and disclaim any association with tactics -which bring so much discredit upon them and do so much to hinder them and their true representatives from finding their proper place in the councils of the country? There is something so utterly un-British in the whole thing that it is hard to understand why the great majority, whose reputation for fairplay is thus besmirched, does not assert itself and rise in revolt, against what is thus done in the name of Labour.