APPEAL TO FARMERS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 302, 19 November 1935, Page 2

APPEAL TO FARMERS.

OPPOSITION TO LABOUR. MAINTENANCE OF FREEHOLD. Per Press Association. NEW PLYMOUTH,-Nov. 18. Addressing a meeting at Pukearuhe Mr W. J. Poison, National Government candidate for Stratford, said the policy of the Labour Party was fundamentally opposed to the policy of the Farmers’ Union, and the union would be betraying the thousands of farmers who were its members if it did not make that clear to them.

The greatest fight in the history of the union, and the one which first made it prominent, was the fight for the freehold which swept a former Government out of power in New Zealand. To-day the maintenance of the freehold was the foremost plank of the union policy. Labour was pledged to abolish freehold. Labour was also pledged to restore the compulsory clauses of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, and to bring farm labourers under it. That they had never been under it was due to the fight put up by the union in conjunction with the Sheep Owners’ Federation—a struggle occupying a whole year and costing a large sum of money in the vears gone by. This saved the industry from burdens like the crushing impost of shifts of workers on dairy a ™ S president of the Farmers’ Union he took the responsibility of pointing these things out. The Farmers Union was said to have no party, but it had a set of definite principles for which it had always fought and would continue to fight. It would be a vacillating organisation if it allowed the work of its founders and the professions of faith ot its members to be jeopardised by any party without vigorous action in defence of them.