THE BULLER ELECTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22102, 4 November 1933, Page 10

THE BULLER ELECTION

A rift has appeared within the lute, and appeared where it was least to have been expected. The National Council of the United Mine Workers •is dissatisfied with the selection of Mr P. C. Webb as the Labour candidate in the by-election of a member for Buller and has decided, in the event of the National Executive of the Labour Party declining to substitute another candidate for him, to recommend the miners to nominate another candidate against him. The United Mine JVorkers organisation is said to be not affiliated to the Labour Representation Committee in the Buller district. On the other hand, ' the unions of miners, which are industrially affiliated to the United Mine Workers, seem to be politically affiliated to the Representation Committee, and, if we may accept as acehrate a statement which the secretary of the United Mine Workers has issued, they have been almost unanimous in endorsing the recommendation that, rather than accept Mr Webb, ’ the miners should place a candidate of their own in nomination. Only at a meeting of the union at Denniston was the candidature of Mr Webb endorsed, and then, according to the statement, by a small majority. The Stockton, Millerton, Wallsend, Dobson, and Runanga unions all agreed to support a miners’ candidate. It is to be gathered that there are two grounds of objection to the acceptance of Mr Webb. Neither has any relation to the fact that he declined military service

during the war. One is that he is & capitalist, but since a great many, probably a majority, of the members of the Labour Party are capitalists this is not an objection to which much weight is likely to be attached. The other is that Mr Webb, as a member of a firm of coal merchants, acts as an agent for the disposal of coal won from the co-operative parties’ mines on the West Coast, and, as the miners’ ; unions do not look with favour on the operations of the co-operative parties, this may be regarded as a serious objection. Mr Webb expresses himself as unperturbed by the threat of opposition by a miners’ candidate, but the Labour Party must itself be concerned over it, for two of its representatives in Parliament—Mr Langstone, national president of the party, and Mr Semple—are, in neglect of their duties in Wellington, visiting the constituency in order to confer with the disaffected miners with, no doubt, the hope of inducing them to withdraw their threat. Should the miners cling to the determination which they have expressed, it is to be feared that some unpleasant names may be applied to them. But it may be conjectured that they will hold their own in a contest in vituperation.