"IMPERIAL BIAS."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20842, 8 April 1931, Page 8

"IMPERIAL BIAS."

Although the Easter conference of the New South Wales Labour Party has hesitated to endorse Mr. Lang's "socialisation" plan, it has not scrupled to identify itself with the wrecking spirit of that plan. Its protests against the continuad observance of Empire Day and the fiagsaluting ceremony in schools breathe noxious disloyalty, and show how little this particular branch of the party ca'res for the national wellbeing these things bespeak. Unfortunately, it is not singular in this respect: in the ranks of Labour there are many who decry these things, and similar protests have been put on record elsewhere. They affect to find in the word "Empire" a justification for the stand they take, ignoring the plain truth that the term, in this familiar modern context, carries no suggestion of military or even commercial domination, either over the units of the world-wide British commonwealth or over alien peoples. To misuse the term so is to be false to recent and current facts, for the British Empire has been an unexampled instrument of national freedom and international co-operation, and remains the cutting-edge of every fraternal cause in the world to-day. Going further than is implied in the adoption of these protests, the conference has instructed—there is no room to doubt the meaning of this term —the State Minister of Education to revise the school syllabus in order to eliminate all "Imperial bias" and to provide for teaching that would give "an adequate conception of the struggles of the working class in history." The implica-,, tion that false conceptions of such struggles are contained in history manuals or that these manuals contain inadequate treatment of them is without foundation, but what is even more intolerable is the palpable effort to capture the education system of the State and make it a means of Red propaganda. The antiBritish purpose of the instruction tc the Minister, who as a nominee of the Labour caucus is under its thumb, is beyond doubt. Thus is flagrantly abused the liberty ot speech and action enjoyed in the Empire and under the flag so ungratefully disesteemed. The time has come for loyalists of all parties to dissociate themselves emphatically from this seditious conspiracy to sow dissension and destroy law.