“GREAT EVENT IN HISTORY’’

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11737, 26 January 1924, Page 10

“GREAT EVENT IN HISTORY’’

MR H. HOLLAND'S OPINION. v ' Per Press Association. * WESTPORT, January 25. Mr H. Holland, M.p., loudly cheered yesterday when, in speaking l at the local .wateraiders’. picnic, he re- ' {erred to the British Labour Party’s accession to office a a one of the greatest events in the history of the British Empire. In the war atmosphere election of 1918, he said, Messrs Macdon- » aid. Snowden, Trevelyan, and Jowett . had suffered defeat. . The whole fury . of the storm of slander then directed » against them was met with confidence. > To-day the man most slandered of all - was the Prime Minister of Biitain, who, with the 'others of his trusted colleagues, was leader of the only party with a policy capable oF extricating the Empire from the economic - slough into which post-war conditions » had plunged it. llr Macdonald hail some time ago declared that the principal portfolios in a Labour'Cabinet , would be. those of Agriculture and Forpign Affairs, and, consistent with that declaration, he himself had taken the

portfolio of Foreign Affairs. The Labour Party’s manifesto, issued just * prior to the December elections, pro- . yided for dealing with the problem of unemployment on a basis of national schemes of productivity work, the adequate maintenance where work was not , provided, for development of agricul- , .ture, land reform, international relationship making for peace, capital levy to reduce the national debt, thus ‘making possible abolition of food duties, amusement tax, corporations’ profit tax, as well as to provide money for necessary social services, public

ownership and control of mines, railway service, and electrical power sta- ” tions, education, care and protection ' of children, provisions for widowed - mothers, the aged, the invalided, etc. * it remained to be seen whether the - present Parliament would permit these - great changes to he made, but one . -thing was certain, especially if it should be found possible to achieve adult suffrage in the meantime, tnat - at the next election the British jieople • would give the Labour Party a majority over the other two parties.