“A GREAT LEFTIST VICTORY”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27090, 26 May 1949, Page 6

“A GREAT LEFTIST VICTORY”

Daily Times Special Service

AUCKLAND, May 25. “A great Leftist victory” was the description given by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Holland, to the conference of the Labour Party, held in Wellington on Tuesday. When he was interviewed on arrival from the south, he said -the news that New Zealand was not to be allowed to prepare her own defences or to pull her weight in the Empire defence boat, would be received joyfully in Moscow. “ Mr James Roberts, president of the Labour Party, said a very true thing a few years ago when he declared that the real parliament of New Zealand was the annual conference of the Labour Party,” Mr Holland said. “ Yesterday was overwhelming proof of that. In this country we are so vulnerable to attack, so isolated, and, ever since New Zealand’s civilisation, so dependent on the British Navy for our security, yet when two conferences of Prime Ministers tell us that our plain duty is to be prepared, and when Britain is so hard-pressed that she can maintain her own people only by free gifts from another nation, we are now to leave Britain to carry the full load while we sit back and submit to the dictates of an outside conference, having no responsibility to, or mandate from, the people. “What now of Mr Savage’s famous declaration that 1 Where Britain’ goes, we go ’? ” Mr Holland asked. " Only a few weeks ago Mr Fraser declared that.Mr Savage’s statement and pledge still pointed the way for us.” Mr Holland said that the Prime Minister had most courageously declared his own views, and these had been endorsed by all.. His Ministerial colleagues and all but one ofdiis caucus, yet he was made to suffer the inexpressible humiliation of tearing up his own resolution and substituting another which was the very negation of his own honest views, “The people elect a Government to govern, and not to kow-tow to every outside pressure group that raises its voice,” Mr Holland continued. “The decision puts the Prime Minister in an intolerable position, and if I were in his place I would resign on the spot or else immediately appeal to the country With a general election. This outside domination of a democratically elected Parliament is a very bad thing and ‘cannot be tolerated by any self-respecting people. “ I feel sure that there will be widespread disappointment that the Priihe Minister and his Government, being themselves convinced of the only proper course to pursue, did not have the courage and determination to do what they know to be right. Britain could not defend us if we were attacked, and we have no right to look to the United States for protection when we are unwilling to defend ourselves.”