ECHOES OF THE PAST

Southland Times, Issue 19575, 12 June 1925, Page 5

ECHOES OF THE PAST

LABOURS POLICY OUTLINED BY MR HOLLAND “CLARION CALL TO DEMOCRACY." (Per United Press Association.) AUCKLAND, June 11. The leader of the Labour Party, Mr H. E. Holland, opened a series of addresses to be given in the Franklin electorate at Otahuhu to-night. Mr Holland said that Labour was functioning in th s campaign in active opposition to the Government of the day. As a controversy had so far ranged round Labour*® land policy, he said he would devote time to that, and quoted figures to show that three principal evils menaced the occupation of land at present. They were aggregation, the so-called freehold system and, thirdly, constant changes in ownership of land, involving speculation. Mr Holland outlined Labour’s remedies. The Franklin by-election was only a preliminary skirmish to the great battle between forces of progress and reaction at the close of the year. The coming General Election would be the most important in the annals of New Zealand, not excepting that of 1890, when Ballance and Seddon triumphed over the forces of the Conservatives. In the last 10 years the Dominion had been going back as far as democratic legislation was concerned. The Labour Party of 1925 was in the same position as the Liberal Party in 1890. It was opposed by the same Conservative forces, and the same progressive forces were behind it. The Labour Party was merely the vanguard, rejecting the opinion of those people who held the progressive ideals of the early Liberals. It represented the organised workers of New Zealand. It was not begging for votes in that contest, but made a clarion call to every democratic thinker in the community. It demanded the support af all democrats. Labour pledged itself that when it came into office, it would write new laws of New Zealand, not in the narrow class interests of the last 10 years, but in the interests of everv man who rendered social service. It would build industrial democracy on foundations laid by Ballance and Seddon in the days of New Zealand’s greater past.