THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1947 A SHOWDOWN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26614, 10 November 1947, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1947 A SHOWDOWN

It will, of course, be argued by Socialists and Communists, not in Australia alone, nor in the Empire alone, that the defeat of a Labour Government in Victoria is a matter of no consequence. It will certainly be argued by the Federal Labour Government in Australia that the beating which Mr Cain’s Government has taken is no reflection of public opinion on the Socialisation programme which is being directed from Canberra. But any protests which deny the significance of the Victorian election must collapse under the weight of the evidence. It was fought on clear-cut issues. The immediate issue, upon which both the Labour candidates and the Federal Ministerial shock-troops who came from Canberra to support them laid stress (while at the same time challenging its relevance) was bank nationalisation. The Victorian Communists, who played their usual role as off-stage voices in the campaign, stressed the paramount importance of this issue. And the Liberal and Country Parties and the press allowed no doubt to remain in the minds of the electors that their votes in this contest were a testing of the plans of Australian Labour to carry through Socialisation to the ultimate conclusion, where control of production, distribution, and exchange—and of every activity of the people—would be in the hands of the State.

Mr Chifley, who was necessarily a more important figure than Mr Cain in the Victorian election, has by its result suffered a resounding defeat. Since he had the forethought to choose a Governor-General who at the time he was called to office was a prominent Socialist politician, Mr Chifley will presumably be spared the final ignominious climax to the debacle that respect for the expressed will of the people dictates; but he will be more stubborn than just, more of a Labourite than a Prime Minister, if he proceeds with his Socialisation programme in the face of this unequivocal rejection of it. This is the direct significance of the election, as it affects Labour — and its unruly travelling companion, Communism—in Australia. Its importance does not stop there. Elsewhere in the world, in those countries in which the ballot box remains the private repository of the individual’s choice of his leaders and his way of life, the trend is away from Stateism in its various forms. In France, a nation nurtured in radicalism, the people - have just registered a decisive vote against Communism. In the United Kingdom the anti-Socialist vote last month showed a sharply emphatic reaction from Socialism, with its blind faith in an ideological programme as the buttress against crisis. The evidence is scattered across the democratic world. Its intei’pretation can be debated, but the meaning is cleai\ In a day in which the nations, weakened by War and threatened by economic crisis, might have been expected to seek after desperate remedies, people are turning away from radicalism. They are seeking again the right to run their , own businesses, to profit by their own toil, to order their own lives, as individuals in a co-operative society. They are rejecting the demand of the Socialists and the Stalinists that they should forfeit their freedom and sacrifice their capacity and will to State planning and Leftist dictatorship. In New Zealand in the present month the people have the opportunity to search their minds and record their votes upon this same question that is receiving so firm an answer elsewhere. They can record their choice in a conflict upon the outcome of which their future and their children’s future depends. Their decision must not be made upon confusing local issues.