SOCIALIST AIM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23528, 17 June 1938, Page 18

SOCIALIST AIM

DOMINATION BY STATE STIFLING PUBLIC OPINION A claim that Socialists sought to lead public opinion into a state of impotence by controlling the means by which information and knowledge could reach the people was made by Professor R. M. Algie, organiser of the Auckland Provincial Freedom Association, speaking at Te Awamiltu on Monday night. “ The broadcasting service is under the complete domination of one mar —the Act makes it clear that the Prime Minister has the absolute right to say who may speak over the air and what the speaker shall be allowed to say,” Professor Algie said. “ Such a condition of things is utterly preposterous in a country which even pretends to be free. This important service was created and is maintained out of funds subscribed by the public, and it is a sign of our growing feebleness as a people that we should allow the nature and quality of our radio programme to be within the discretion of a single individual, especially when that individual is a politician with a specific policy to propagate.” Press, Radio, and Kinema No Socialist could ever tolerate a free and independent press, said the speaker. For that reason newspapers must be regulated, then controlled, and finally 'reduced to such a state that they dare not publish anything that reflected upon or criticised adversely the policy of the Government for the time being. Labour Party speakers nowadays made a point of alleging on every possible occasion the unfairness of the newspapers. It was possible that they hoped by such tactics to create in the minds of the people a feeling of injustice and a grievance, and thus to prepare them for a censorship which otherwise they would regard as absolutely intolerable. There were no more powerful ways of influencing public opinion than by the press, the radio, and the sound 'film. The radio was completely subject to the will of the Labour Party. The press had had enough veiled warnings to make it aware of tire dangers that lay ahead. Motion picture exhibitors were already being made to feel the weight of the iron heel of Socialistic regulation. , A careful study of recent Ordersdn-Council relating to picture theatres would show quickly enough that the Government was tightening its hold upon this branch of public entertainment and instruction. Whole People Conscripted “The Socialist State presents to those with any imagination at all a drab and wholly unattractive picture,” Professor Algie continued. “Assuming that it can be made to work —and the evidence for this is unconvincing —we may have security in respect of the material needs of everyday life. But at what a cost. The people as a whole will find themselves conscripted into a great industrial army of State employees. They will work when and where they are told by bureaucratic departments and officials. ( Hours of work, rates of pay and conditions of labour will all be determined by an all-powerful State, and there will be no effective public opinion to exert an influence for the betterment of those conditions.

“A controlled press and a propagandist radio will give us such information as State officials may regard as being good for us. Picture theatres will have no effective control over their own programmes, but will be required to place before bored audiences such uninspiring themes as the progress in public works methods, the doings of the Bureau of Industrial Efficiency, together with reel after reel depicting Cabinet Ministers opening new schools, laying foundation stones and doing all the other trivial things incidental to the propaganda side of politics.”