The Southland Times MONDAY, MAY 19, 1941. A Set-back for Labour

Southland Times, Issue 24438, 19 May 1941, Page 6

The Southland Times MONDAY, MAY 19, 1941. A Set-back for Labour

POLLING in the local elections on ■ Saturday was poor throughout New Zealand. The proportion of voters was not everywhere as small as in Invercargill, where it appears that only about one elector in every three went to the booths; but even in Dunedin, where the contest was relatively keen, only two-thirds of the possible votes were cast, and in each of the other three metropolitan centres polling was substantially below the 1938 level. The apathy of the public must to some extent discount the value of the elections as an indicatoi’ of political feeling. Nevertheless, the swing against Labour in the four centres, where the party has insisted on making the elections a political issue, was too pronounced to be explained by apathy alone. It is unreasonable to assume that only the pro-Labour vote was affected by the general lack of interest in the election. The antiLabour vote may have been equally affected: indeed, it is widely believed that the main body of Labour supporters is subjected to a closer discipline at election times than its opponents. Apathy on the Labour side cannot explain the election of Citizens’ Association mayors, city councils, hospital boards and harbour boards in all four centres; nor can it explain the sweeping changes which have taken place on many of these local authorities. In Auckland the Citizens’ Association gained 20 of the 21 seats on the city council; in Wellington every one of the six sitting Labour councillors was defeated and the Citizens’ Association secured the election of the whole of its “ticket”; in Christchurch a Labour majority of 10 seats to six on the city council was turned into a Labour minority of four seats to 12; and in Dunedin the Citizens’ Association increased its representation on the council from eight out of 12, to nine. In both Auckland and Wellington prominent Labour Members of Parliament lost their seats on local bodies. The result in Wellington is described in. a Press Association message as “one of the biggest landslides in the history of municipal'politics in Wellington.” The Christchurch poll is regarded as an overwhelming defeat” for Labour, which not only lost the mayoral and council elections but suffered heavy reductions in its representation on all the other bodies. In Dunedin the sitting mayor withstood a strong challenge from Dr D. G. McMillan, the Labour candidate, and Labour lost one seat on the council, the harbour board and the hospital board respectively. In all four centres the hospital board elections went against Labour; in Wellington the party failed to retain a single seat.

Even when full allowance is made for the small poll and the influence of local issues, these results show an astonishingly consistent trend away from the Labour Party. Were the electors merely annoyed by the holding of local elections in the most critical period of the war, or is there a deeper reason for their dissatisfaction? Time alone will tell; but it is hard to believe that a passing annoyance could account for such far-reaching changes. Nowhere will the returns be more closely studied than in the Labour Party, for after raising the political issue in its own electoral strongholds it can scarcely ignore the political implications of an emphatic defeat. If it is now perhaps less anxious to force a General Election on the country, and more willing to collaborate with the Opposition in a united war effort, the local elections will have served an invaluable purpose.