THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1950, WATERFRONT CRISIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27499, 20 September 1950, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1950, WATERFRONT CRISIS

In accepting the challenge of the waterside workers to good government and good sense, the Prime Minister has stated the view that the waterfront strike “is part and - parcel of the cold war being waged throughout the world, and the Government must look at it on that basis.” This is a grave charge. It means that the Government is convinced that the waterfront strikers are playing the Communists’ game of spreading disaffection among the democratic communities, of causing disruption in industry, of creating economic difficulty and distress among the free peoples of the world —all with a view to bringing our system of government down about our ears. It is a grave charge; and yet the history of dispute? and ... stoppages within an industry vital to our national well-being shows it to be justified. Not all waterside workers are Communists. Indeed, it is safe to believe that few of them are. Yet they are jumping to obey the dictates of Marx—and of Moscow —as if the dissolution of the democratic world in misery, T' violence and turmoil, and the sub- :■ stitution of a totalitarian State, was • their highest aim in life. It seems almost silly to recapitulate the weary course of the v “lampblack dispute" which is the ostensible cause of the strike. A •*' wry comment on the significance !, of the dispute as a source of national - disturbance is that the substance in question is not “lampblack” at all. Upon such unstable grounds the waterside workers throughout -v New Zealand decided to hold-up the

community to ransom, to immobilise thousands of tons of shipping in a '' period of world anxiety and world :• need for cargo vessels, and to.deprive themselves and their families of good earnings, of the remaining ' • sympathy of the people, and of further tolerance by the Government. Their failure to hold to their pledged word to precipitate no v more waterfront stoppages until a s Royal Commission had reported on the industry is the final act of bad faith against, a Government which > was elected by the people of New Zealand to administer the affairs of the country in the interests of the ordinary democratic citizen. The Government’s decision to introduce a state of emergency if work on the waterfront does not . - start by tomorrow afternoon gives ■ the waterfront workers a few brief

hours in which to reconsider their position. Thereafter if'they persist ? in accepting bad advice they will ~ have declared themselves against the law; they will have stigmatised themselves as men who are ready to plunge the country into a grim ' and lamentable crisis rather than listen to reason and let their poor 1: dispute be settled on an orderly • basis. If they decide to continue the strike, and so to invite further ■- industrial unrest, they make themr selves enemies of the people. It is not conceivable that action so ; drastic, and so wicked, could be due to a dispute about “ lampblack.” * The Government will be right in determining more sinister motives for this anti-social , action and in - moving accordingly.

. REPORT ON SAMOA ' The latest mission despatched by the United Nations Trusteeship Council to inspect trust territories t in the . Pacific was apparently of . more congenial—or more practical —disposition than its predecessor. ■- Its comments on the administration •. of Western Samoa were flattering to New Zealand, and almost the t only reservation it expressed was - the formal hope that “ ways should be sought for increased participation by the Samoans in the executive branch of the Government.” As members of the mission probably realised well* enough, the people of V Western Samoa have not yet thoroughly assimilated all the changes that have been made in .-the past two years, and any new political innovations would be premature and ill-advised. The Samoans, like all Polynesian peoples in which divisions of society were originally clearly demarcated, are by nature conservative and opposed to sudden change. It would be quite futile for New Zealand, the administering authority, to hasten the rate for progress, for the people are not prepared for the political and economic tensions that would inevitably accompany such precipitate action. ; Samoa today is living comfortably within its means, and the only subsidies received from the New Zealand Government are payments made for specific purposes such as education, broadcasting, health and roading. Its new political organisation is working reasonably well and throughout the islands there as - evidence of a growing political . awareness. Politics are now no

longer the exclusive concern of a restricted circle of chiefs but have become the interest of the common people. The establishment of a radio station which broadcasts the proceedings of the Samoan Legislative Assembly has undoubtedly been responsible for this widening of interest in the law-making machinery of the territory, but some years must elapse before Samoan society is" prepared to jettison its present acknowledgment of the privileges of rank. The political outlook is of less concern than the economic. The Samoans are eager to receive better health and educational facilities that are being made available to them as quickly as native practitioners and teachers can be trained. But the growth of amenities entails a corresponding growth in administrative costs, and the Western Sramoan budget will not support any great increase in expenditure without recourse to further taxation. Western Samoa is not a rich territory, and for that reason the New Zealand Government should continue its plan of progressive, if unspectacular, achievement in the islands, rather than court disaster by embarking on policies beyond the capacity of the economy of the territory to support.