"ARRANT NONSENSE”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27028, 12 March 1949, Page 6

"ARRANT NONSENSE”

SOVIET PAPER’S VIEWS CONDITIONS IN DOMINION EMPHATIC DENIAL ISSUED PA WELLINGTON, Mar. 11. “The arrant nonsense published by Trud in Moscow respecting the trades union movement and the conditions ol workers in New Zealand has not only caused hilarity in New Zealand but also emphasised the misleading propaganda which Moscow issues for consumption in Russia and its satellite countries where the people have little or no opportunity of checking facts,” said the secretary of the New Zealand Federation of Labour, Mr K. Baxter. “Delegates from the New Zealand trades union movement who visited overseas countries, including Russia, unanimously recorded the fact that working conditions and the standard of living of the people of New Zealand compare more than favourably wirh the standard of living of people in other countries. Official statistics, including those issued by the USSR, endorse the views and statements of our delegates. We are proud to call our Maori friends fellow unionists. They have full equality with all sections in every phase of social and economic life and actively participate in the government and administration of the country, some having occupied the highest positions. \

“Contrary to being ‘exterminated.’ our Native population has actually increased in greater proportion to the wffite population. So far as class, race or creed distinctions are concerned, New Zealand enjoys greater equality than most other countries. Indeed, the peoples of other races (including African, Indian, Russian and Chinese) have full equality with our own people in every respect. No other country, has greater equality, and it is because of this knowledge that the ridiculous nonsense published by has astounded our people. These facts are known to the workers and people of Russia and Russian-controlled countries.. “If Russian workers were fully aware of the conditions existing in New Zealand, it is possible that they would be agreeably surpirsed,” Mr Baxter continued. “We believe-that one of the functions of the iron curtain is to prevent Russian and other workers from obtaining this comparative information. It will be noted that the extensive abuse directed at the leaders and members of the New Zealand trade union movement arose because we, in accordance with the principles actuating our free trade unions, requested free and impartial investigation into the serious allegations that millions of human beings were being held in slave camps of a worse nature and under worse conditions than the Germans inflicted on the inmates of Dachau. We do not assert nor deny the truth of the assertions. We merely asked for a free investigation into the allegations and an examination of such camps. Our country and our conditions are open for inspection by any person of any country. We do not resent, but would welcome any investigation from any source. All we expected from our Russian comrades was for them to extend to us similar opportunities.

“We have despatched,” Mr Baxter concluded, “a cable to the trade union movement of the USSR, ‘Regret you have misconstrued our cable asking for a full and free investigation of the allegations in the charge made of slave labour conditions in USSR. We offer you every opportunity to investigate conditions here, and would welcome an investigation by the United Nations in all countries. We ask you to use what influence you may have to have the same opportunities extended to us.’”

Trud, commenting on the reply by the Central Organisation of the Soviet Trades Unions to the New' Zealand Federation of Labour suggestion that impartial representatives of the United Nations should investigate the charges of slave labour behind the Iron Curtain, accused the federation of “by no means acting in the interests of the New Zealand workers,” but “in the interests of the imperialists of the United States.” Trud’s reference to the Maoris, as contained in a translation of the report received in Wellington-from the New Zealand Minister in Moscow, Mr C. W. Boswell, was: “As regards the native population of New Zealand itself—the Maoris—they have for 100 years been subject to organised extermination. and those who have remained alive have been driven on to poor land and are slaves of the British. The ruling circles of New Zealand do not conceal their desire to perpetuate the Maoris’ position as slaves by openly teaching their ‘ racial inferiority.’ ”