Sabotage?

Southland Times, Issue 23991, 5 December 1939, Page 6

Sabotage?

IN an address to the Labour Party Debating Club in Dunedin, Dr D. G. McMillan is reported to have said that Mr Semple and Mr Webb had been warning members against opponents outside the party, but that in his opinion “the wreckers and National Party agents who have got inside the party are far more dangerous.” If this had been one of the generalizations of dubious quality thrown out by Dr McMillan from time to time there would be little point in noticing it. But the speaker illustrated his preposterous claim. “Everybody

knows,” he said, “that the nationalization of the Bank of New Zealand has been in our platform for years, and yet since we have been the Government, wreckers and National Party agents within the party have done their best to prevent that plank being put into effect.” It is generally known that a substantial section of the Parliamentary Labour Party has recently been pressing for the nationalization of the Bank of New Zealand. If this extreme socialist measure has not been carried into effect it is because the Cabinet has wisely resisted pressure from the Left-wingers. Thus when Dr McMillan suggested that wreckers and National Party agents were responsible for the Government’s rejection of the measure he was implying that the “wreckers” were actually members of the Cabinet. If he did not mean this he expressed himself badly on a subject which required an unequivocal clearness, or should not have been raised at all. But if he meant what his words implied he was attacking Cabinet Ministers in terms usually reserved by such speakers. for their opponents in party politics. Apparently the Government is so busy looking for saboteurs among Opposition M.P.s, newspaper editors, farmers and business men that it has failed to hear the voices of disunity within its own parliamentary ranks.