Was The Meeting “Stacked”?

Northern Advocate, 19 December 1938, Page 8

Was The Meeting “Stacked”?

1 Special to “Northern Advocate ”l AUCKLAND. This Day. “The meeting was ‘stacked,’ but not by the Communists. I am confident that if a seci’et ballot is taken at a future meeting, the decision will be reversed.”

This statement was made by Mr T. Stanley, secretary of the Builders’ and General Labourers’ Union, who, at a meeting last week of the Auckland Council of the Federation of Labour, was the subject of a vote of no confidence.

Mr Stanley said yesterday that it had been stated that Communists were an organised minority who enforced their will upon the majority. “In at least one known case, delegates who did not know my side of the incident were instructed, prior to the meeting, to vote against me,” Mr Stanley added. “The ‘red-baiting’ campaign is simply being used as a smoke screen for an attack on the unity of the Labour and trade union movement. “Certain trade union officials, influenced by personal considerations, have become, consciously or unconsciously, tools of the enemies of the Labour movement.

“The position with regard to the dispute at the Otahuhu railway workshops is typical of the campaign of misrepresentation that is going on. “The Otahuhu strike was not engineered by Communists, but was the result of long-standing grievances.’’