THE PARNELL ELECTION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 137, 9 May 1930, Page 6

THE PARNELL ELECTION.

The country is to be congratulated upon the outcome of the Parnell election, which resulted in so decisive a victory for tiie Reform candidate, Mr W. P. Enciean, on Wednesday. With a majority approximating fifteen hundred, exefusive of tiie absentee and postal votes which cannot possibly affect the result but should if anything increase that majority, there can be no mistaking the significance of the vote which has once again placed the electorate on the side of Reform politics. Here, again, the constituency has declared, as the electors of West Fulham have done, against the Socialistic trend of latter day politics. But, what is probably the most significant happening in connection with the election is the fact that the Reform candidate actually secured a greater number of votes at the polling booths where the Public Works employees recorded their votes than the Labour Socialist candidate, Mr Bloodworth. This is the more surprising in view of the activities of Mr H. E. Holland, the Labour Socialist leader, and his colleagues, Messrs Walter Nash, P. Fraser, and the local Labour M.lVs, on Mr Bloodworth’s behalf. While Mr Bloodworth certainly polled better than the Labour Socialist candidate, Mr Yarnall, did in 1928, he only increased the latter’s vote by 494 and failed to come anywhere near Mr Way’s vote of 391 Uin 1925. Mr Bloodworth was admittedly the best candidate the Labour Socialists could have nominated in their interests. He has a good local record as a city councillor, is a man of fairly moderate views and a generally respected citizen, but Parnell is not of course a Labour constituency, and the electors were evidently not prepared to give Mr Holland an additional colleague in the House of Representatives. Nor, as the voting showed, were they inclined to strengthen the Government party, which has shown itself so ready to make concessions to the Socialists, in order to retain possession of the Government benches. Not all the blandishments of the Ministers of the Crown who busied themselves in the electorate on behalf of Mr W. A. Donald, nor the Acting-Prime Minister’s unfolding of the Government programme for the coming session, nor yet again the Minister of Labour’s absurd claim that Sir Joseph Ward’s breakdown in health was due to the stonewalling of the Government’s taxation measures by the Reform Party in the House of Representatives, availed to stem the rising tide in favour of Mr Coates and his colleagues. The two exmembers, Messrs J. S. Dickson and H. R. Jenkins, stood solidly behind the Reform candidate throughout the election contest, both of whom, although offering their services to the Reform Party, had loyally accepted the decision of the selection conference, and gave hearty and generous support to Mr Endean on the public platform. This must be, from the Reform Party standpoint, one of the most gratifying features of the election, which happily appears by the reports to have been conducted by all parties taking part in the contest with an absence of personalities and ill-feeling which too often accompany such campaigns.