LABOUR POLITICS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19887, 15 March 1939, Page 14

LABOUR POLITICS

TE ARAROA MEETING 1939 ('OiM MTTTEE CHOSEN IIAOIU CANDIDATES (I leva ltl Ooi-reepondont.) An executive for the ensuing year was elected at a meeting of Labour Party supporters in the Te Araroa district, held recently. The meeting took place in the carved house in Te Araroa, after some of the elders of the tribe had secured assurances that nothing out of order would be done, they having entertained some doubts as to whether the house should be used for a meeting of a political character. It was explained by Mr. R. T, Kohere, on behalf of the Labour supporters, that it had been intended to hold the gathering elsewhere, but that -preparations for a tangi had interfered with those arrangements. Mr. Kohere was elected chairman of the committee, and Mr. Kuku Brown secretary and treasurer, the other members of the committee being Mrs. Dick Waitoa, and Messrs. Sam Aramakutu, Mohi Korohina, W. Brown, Wiki Aramakutu and Tom Waikori. The supporters present decided to forward a proposal that tnc customary method of nominating native candidates for Parliament by recommendations from committees would not work in the Maori electorates, recommendations by well-known Labour leaders. Maori and European, being preferred. Sir A. T. Ngala’s Successor An address explaining the Social Security Act, the import control measures, and the issues of .socialism versus capitalism was given by Mr, Kohere. Mr. J. Hayes, Wai-o-mata-tini, who was among the elders present to observe the proceedings, accused the Labour Party of imitating Russia, but he agreed with Mr, Kohere that the party had existed in New Zealand long before Communism war, introduced in Russia. It was revealed by a member of the elders’ party that a successor to Sir Apirana Ngata was to be selected at a meeting to be held in Tikitiki shortly, and this information aroused a .short discussion, in the course of which Mr. Kohere stated that but for the nomination of a Ratana candidate. Sir Apirana would have been defeated by Labour at the last general elections; while his own (Mr. Kohere’s) nomination was all that prevented the Ratana party from claiming all the Maori seats in the House, though there were only a handful of Ratana supporters in the Eastern Maori electorate.