The Southland Times TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1938. Labour’s Declared Objective

Southland Times, Issue 23540, 21 June 1938, Page 6

The Southland Times TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1938. Labour’s Declared Objective

In recent weeks prominent members of the Government have shown an increasing willingness to disclaim any socialistic intentions. “There have been all sorts of stupid statements that the Government is going to confiscate, socialize, nationalize and revolutionize everything in the country, but it is not going to do anything of the kind,” said the Minister of Public Works, Mr Semple, at Masterton. “The Government, he added, “is not going to interfere with the private interests or the people of New Zealand except where vested interests conflict with the general welfare of the nation.” The Prime Minister, in his recent addresses in the North Island, has been giving similar assurances. For instance, according to a Press Association report, printed yesterday, of his speech at Masterton,

Mr Savage emphatically denied that his Government wanted to socialize farms. A man working a farm for himself would work it much better than it ne were working it for wages. Ail they wanted was the fullest economic production. When the individual did the job there was no question of the btate stepping in.

How can Mr Semple and Mr Savage expect the public to accept these assurances when the socialization of the means of production, distribution and exchange is the declared objective of their Government, reaffirmed as recently as the last Easter conference? This cardinal plank in the Labour Party’s policy involves the complete transference of all major industries and operations to State ownership and control. It is not to be expected that farming would be completely socialized in the next three years if Labour were returned to power, though many farmers are only now discovering the extent to which the Government has advanced in this direction already. But the land is the major means of production in this country and farmers represent the largest class of producers. Unless the Labour Government is prepared to repudiate the cardinal plank in its platform, it must impose a greater and greater measure of State control over farming; for obviously the socialist State can never be achieved while the country’s major industry remains outside it. There is no need to repeat the unmistakable evidence of the Government’s socialist policy that has been revealed during its two years and a-half of office, nor to recapitulate the numerous socialist avowals of Government members. The Government’s goal is the socialization of industry. The Labour Party is not, as Mr Savage would have everyone believe, a resurrection of the Liberal Party, it has not begun “where Seddon left off”; it is moving as rapidly as it can along a path of its own designing —towards socialism. The path may be strewn with free gifts, the end of it may be concealed by twists and turns, but it leads only to the one goal. When this fact is made clear, the reason for these ministerial disclaimers becomes clear also. This is election year, the paramount issue of the election is to be socialism versus private enterprise, and there have been straws in the wind that can-hardly have escaped the Labour Party’s notice. In such circumstances the Government might have been' expected to decide to stand or fall by its convictions; or it might have decided to repudiate its socialization plank. But it seems to be adopting what might be called a “middle course”—that is, to disown socialism in public while continuing to subscribe to it in the party platform. After all, we have Mr A. G. Osborne’s word for it that promises even when made by the Prime Minister are not to be considered binding unless they appear in the Labour Party’s printed manifesto.