WATERFRONT SETTLEMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27505, 27 September 1950, Page 8

WATERFRONT SETTLEMENT

Sir,—The blatant pro-National Party propaganda of your parliamentary reporter makes amusing reading. On the settlement of the watersiders' strike he writes: “Tactful and firm, Mr Holland made it clear that with his Government there would be on compromise with threats or capitulating to those who refused to accept the legal decisions of statutory authorities. His strong stand in the crisis should have more than retrieved for the Government whatever ground it may have lost in the past few months.”

As the watersiders got exactly what they went out on strike for, and that after Mr Holland’s declaration of a state of emergency, it is hard to see how your reporter can claim it is a win for Mr Holland. If Labour had still been the Government such a state of things would have been called ” appeasement,” but, according to your reporter, it adds to Mr Holland’s prestige—clearly a case of “ other times, other ways,” like Mr Holland’s frequent use of'the phrase ‘Dear old Britain” while in opposition, as compared with his now sparing use of it, when he no longer needs to use it as a vote-catcher.—l am, etc., Labourite.