MR HARDY AND THE AWARUA SEAT

Southland Times, Issue 23634, 8 October 1938, Page 18

MR HARDY AND THE AWARUA SEAT

To The Editor

Sir, —I do not wish it to be inferred from the announcement of my withdrawal from the Awarua contest that I endorse the administration of the Labour Government. I still hold the views which I freely expressed while in the party and which finally led to my leaving it. The Government’s failure to keep faith with the dairy industry over the guaranteed price, its failure to rehabilitate struggling farmers or to produce a progressive land policy, and its failure to measure the farmer with the same measuring tape as it used for the industrial worker must settle the chance of anyone even remotely connected with the Labour Party in country districts. I believe the Labour Party got into power by capitalizing the poverty and discontent of town and country interests and I am disappointed to find that its remedy for these troubles, especially in the case of farmers, is extremely feeble and even highly objectionable. The operations of professional wirepullers behind the Labour Party are open to objection and I' was surprised to find that anyone raising a. voice to support the claims of struggling farmers, or to protect working girls from exploitation at the hands of trade union secretaries, should be howled down by all the engines of Government propaganda. Experience in the party left me with ■grave doubts of the Government’s sincerity in matters of rural interest and I believe the limit was reached when Mr J. Roberts, president of the Labour Party, openly encouraged a.i aspirant for Southland political honours to sell the farmers another pup. _ When I hear Messrs Beck, Lynch and Denham saying they have faith in the Labour Party I can only conclude it is that kind of faith defined by Mark Twain as “Believing what you know ain’t so.”—Yours, ,ptc., T. V. HARDY. October 7, 1938.