MR. JACK JONES AND “AJAX.”

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4958, 20 February 1937, Page 5

MR. JACK JONES AND “AJAX.”

(To the Editor). Sir, —Not all the tea in Ceylon’s plantations would make me sign my name to a letter in a newspaper. Perhaps old “Ajax,” assailed so bitterly by Mr. Jack Jones, the prominent Labour advocate and candidate, in your columns on Tuesday, is of the same disposition. Certainly he is of the some politics. But even while signing a non de plume to the foot of this letter, I will say this: that I belive that anonymous writers who bring critical and constructive argument in all seriousness before the public in this manner, should not be assailed in the bitter and almost vindictive manner in which Mr. Jones has assailed “Ajax.” I know that “Ajax” attacked Mr. Jones’s politics as expressed at the meeting at Owens Block —then why did not Mr. Jones reply pointing out that the arguments of “Ajax” were invhlid, and more important, why they were invalid, in reasoned judgment? I cannot believe that the term “Tories,” for instance, can be applied to New Zealand politicians, even if one dislikes them. Perhaps Mr, Jones did not, as he says, give his views on the banking system at Owens Block, but in the clipping of the report of his meeting which I have, it is stated that “the speaker then dealt with the banking system at great length.” Well, if he can speak at great length on this subject while a Labour candidate with most definite views and not give those view's, he’s certainly a wonderful man. Mr. Jones apparently does not think the depression is passing in Britain. At present I couldn’t check up his figures of people living on 6s a week, but surely he must recognise that conditions are very much better there. Still, I’ll leave that to business statistics and general knowledge. What I would like to do, however, is to ask Mr. Jones if the following remark, made by him as, I take it, a candidate for inclusion in the present Government, was a fit and proper one to make to a P.W.D. branch of the Labour Party: “. . . but regretted that some of the Tory-minded administrative officials (especially in the Waitomo electorate) were not playing the game, and were not giving that loyalty to the Government that they should.” He was reported to have said that. What would happen if a junior partner in a large firm said such a thing to his men? Yet, I suggest that Mr. Jones’s position is not morally greatly different—he should take his complaints to the proper quarter rather than make a veiled attack on officials employed by his Government. It is also quite a different story to the rebuke one of our Labour Ministers, when down South, gave to a worker who insinuated that Departmental staffs were not pulling their weight with the Government. —I am, etc., NOT A GREEK HERO.