HIGH HANDED ACTION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 28 March 1938, Page 10

HIGH HANDED ACTION

POSITION OF HONEY-rROIIECF.RS All producers should note the highhanded manner in which the honey producers arc being treated by Mr Nash through the Internal Marketing Department (says the "N.Z. Herald"). The | export market will in future lye closed to them unless they do all their marketing through the department. In ! other words they are left with severely | limited rights in the disposal of tiie fru.ts of their planning an<’ labour. l At the same time the powers and i authority of the Honey Control Board . have been so rudely overridden and reduced that all tiree members have resigned. The chairman. Mr J. R. Butland, in a statement published this morning gives reasons for their action that should satisfy the producers whom they have represented hitherto and served with conspicuous ability and success. Even if another board should be induced to take office on the conditions declined by the outgoing members. that wdll not alter the fact that Mr Nash has practically endec* selfgovernment of the industry (as already done in the dairy industry), and transferred the effective control to civil servants. Another section of the producers is to be ruled by the bureaucrats. The latter handle the big stick of closure on exports if producers do no entrust all their output to the State. This is government, not by consent of the governed by force. It is market dictatorship, the method common to Nazi. Fascist and Communist government. but foreign to the representative principle of self-government in British Parliamentary democrats. The fate that has overtaken the honey pool should be noted by all producers and all lovers of freedom. The manner in which the honey producers have been deprived of rights and privileges gives fair warning. It represents one more step toward the goal of complete socialisation and the bureaucratic tyranny hat goes with Socialism.