WOMEN ADDRESSED

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32315, 17 September 1943, Page 2

WOMEN ADDRESSED

MRS J. THORN IN PAEROA

WELL-ATTENDED MEETING

POLITICAL ADDRESS GIVEN

At a well-attended meeting held in the Civic Hall, Paeroa, on Wednesday afternoon, Mrs J. Thorn, wife of Mr James Thorn, Government member for Thames, stressed the supreme importance to women of men who devoutly believed' in the principles the Atlantic Charter attending the Peace Conference. In Clauses 1 4, 5 and 6 of the Charter the very philosophy of the workingclass movement was epitomised, said Mrs Thorn. It laid down the right of all nations to the right of access on equal terms to the trade and to raw materials l of the world; improved labour standards; economic adjustment and social security; and above all a peace which will afford, all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their- own boundaries and assurance that all men in all lands shall live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.

No decent order of society could come about unless these principles were visualised and realised in a measurable time, and the men and women who sold their labour to live were more united to-day than exer. The buying- and selling of human labour was morally not permissible, she said; and in some way there had to be found a way in which black and white and brown and yellow could live on this earth.

All that we were and had achieved, even if the war be won, we could still lose in a bad peace, said the speaker. Remembering Woodrow Wilson and his Fourteen Points, his heartbreak and disillusion leading to his mental breakdown when they were jettisoned, they should, as women, choose now the New Zealand Labour’ Party in Government.

She analysed the Social Security legislation in its direct bearing on/ women’s lives in the community and begged women to regard family allowances' as the foundation of the endowment of motherhood and to regard it as particularly their own to bring about freedom and' independence in the new order.

The make-up of capitalist society she insisted, was fundamentally immoral and women were biologically threatened in each international crisis. The re-creation ■of this 1 society far transcended any other consideration in our lives. We had proved in New Zealand, that society could be so transformed and what New Zealand could do, Europe could 1 do, without ‘plunging the world into chaos every generation. The Mayoress, Mrs Edwards chaired the meeting and expressed her pleasure to do so. “That we thank Mrs Thorn for her informative and. interesting address and express our confidence at the ballot box,” was a resolution moved- by ’Mrs E. Turton, seconded by Mrs J. Hill, and carried by acclamation.