SUPPORT FOR LABOUR.

Southland Times, Issue 18756, 17 December 1919, Page 7

SUPPORT FOR LABOUR.

To the Editor. Sir, —In your article dealing with my letter you state that I have not done you justice when I said “you would not support Labour whether there were disloyalists in the party or not.” I should be sorry to do you an injustice, Sir, because I have always, and I believe all other supporters of the Labour Party have, received a square deal from you and, fair opportunities through your correspondence columns. However, I did not wean to imply by my remarks that you would never support anvthing advocated by the Labour Party, but that vou would not support them at the poll. ‘This, I think, Sir, is the only fair interpretation that can be drawn from the words used. For instance, Sir J. G. Ward is supporting some of the planks of the Labour platform, but he does not support the Labour Party. You make a mistake when you state that Holland and Semple have absolute control over the Party. ' They have come more in the limelight simply because they have been in Parliament, and Mr Holland was elected leader of the small band of Labour men in Parliament, but there may be quite another get of men there this time. I trust, too, it will be a much larger number and it does not follow then, Mr Editor, that the same man will be elected as leader. That will depend on the men elected and, as I pointed out in my previous letters, it is for the workers to send men to represent them like Mr Paul and Mr Archer, who will elect sane leaders. One reason why I am supporting Mr Archer is that he believes in and advocates constitutional methods in bringing about the reforms advocated by the Party, and this, as you know, I have always strong on. I was one of the delegates who left the big Labour conference in Wellington in 1912 as a protest against extreme methods and direct action as opposed to constitutional and political action. Even Messrs Holland and Semple must have modified their views since then, •and with men like Archer and Paul in the Party may modify them still more. As Mr Archer has pointed out, members of the Party elected to Parliament are pledged to support the platform, outside of that they are free men, and if one or two give utterance to disloyal statements it is their own opinions and not the opinions of the Party, and it would be very foolish for the people •who are satisfied that the reforms advocated by that Party are the only ones that will give them relief from the monopolist and profiteer to refrain from placing the men there who will carry out those reforms simply because there are or have been men in the Party who have given utterance to extreme views.—l am, etc., F. HUTCHINS. December 16-