THE CHAINS OF PARTY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24913, 12 May 1942, Page 2

THE CHAINS OF PARTY

It is possible to sympathise with the Prime Minister in the humiliating position in which he is placed by the obdurate refusal of the Labour caucus to consent to the formation of a National Government. None can be more keenly conscious than Mr Fraser himself of the peculiar limitations of his authority as Leader of the Government. It would be surprising, indeed, if he were not found resentful of the martinet role played by the caucus in matters in which he might reasonably claim the privilege of exercising an unfettered discretion. In April, when the party conference vetoed the proposal for reconstruction of the Government on a national basis, it rested its refusal on the extraordinary ground that such reconstruction would “ engender disunity.” We would search vainly—as the Prime Minister has apparently sought—for the logic behind that conclusion. It is nonexistent. Before the House of Representatives adjourned on Saturday last Mr Fraser re-emphasised his belief that the creation of a National Government would be “in the interests of the country.” Presumably the view of the caucus is that it would not be in the interests of the Labour Party, which seems, in the light of partisan discussion, to be the only place in which a decision to reconstruct on non-party lines would in fact “engender disunity.” The Prime Minister, •' however, bows to the inevitable. The extra-Parlia-mentary Labour forces are evidently too strongly arrayed against him, so that the most he can promise an impatient Opposition, and what is, probably an equally impatient majority group throughout the electorate, is that if he cannot get “ all he wants ” in the direction of national government he “will try to obtain the maximum.” It is a lamentable confession of impotence into which Mr Fraser is thus forced. He is compelled to admit, and at the same time deplore, the subservient position occupied by himself before the party organisation. Despite the fact that he has unique opportunity for assessing the complexity of present administrative problems, and the extent to which the approach to them might be simplified if his colleagues were men selected on the dispassionate basis of capacity to serve, he cannot escape the obligation to be bound by the decisions of caucus on questions of policy. If he represents, as it must be supposed he has done, that the reconstruction of the Government is overdue, the conference reaction seems to be to tighten the party chains rather than relax them. The Prime Minister’s dilemma, in the circumstances, is a painful one. He has the choice between the almost equal .evils of resignation—which, unless it forced an election, could not materially affect the political situation in its party aspects—and the continued acceptance of restraints on his judgment imposed from without and felt by him to be inimical to the country’s best interests.