RUTHLESS DICTATORSHIP

Taranaki Daily News, 10 June 1931, Page 14

RUTHLESS DICTATORSHIP

REGIME OF THE LANG PARTY PEOPLE OF N.S.W. IN THE GRIP. SPIRIT OF A.I.F. STILL LIVES. (By Hugh Adam in Melbourne Herald.) You cannot be five minutes in Syd nev without being assured that if there were an election in New South Wales to-morrow Lang and-his party would be bundled out of office. The New South Wales public is notoriously the most uncertain political factor m Australia. .More than half the people of the State live in Sydney, a city that by a combination of conditions and circumstances has fallen into a casual, careless, cynical attitude towards its political Government. The result of the New South Wales elections in October shocked public opinion throughout the other States or Australia. Making every allowance for the greater campaigning abilities of the Labour leaders, there can be no other explanation but that the people of New South Wales did not give much serious, honest thought to their public affairs. Even to-day they may not appear to be as politically minded as the people of the rest of Australia, but their pockets and their stomachs are doing plenty of thinking for them. FROM BAD TO WORSE. As is inevitable with industry failing and capital taking flight, social conditions in New South Wales are going from bad to worse. The unemployment position is getting beyond .the possibility of adequate handling by the community so long as Lang’s grip remains upon reproductive enterprise. When Lang took office in October the Government had been finding £20,000 a month to provide relief work for the unemployed. Bavin was paying less than the basic wage, but, by working 40 hours a week, the relief worker was able to earn a wage of £3 8s 9d. Lang has attempted to restore the basic wage to unemployed relief work. Actually a relief worker under the Lang scheme is in money only two shillings a week better off than he was underthe Bavin scheme. He works only 35 hours a week and he pays- wage tax of one shilling in the pound whereas he paid only threepence in the pound to the Bavin Government. The amount of money that Lang is able to find for relief work is decreasing- every week. Last month he could nol; raise more than £12,000, as against the £20,000 a month that was available when he took office. In a few weeks, unless Lang can lay his hands upon fresh supplies of money for the Government’s spending, the unemployed relief works that are in hand will have to be abandoned. LIVING ON THE DOLE. Those in New South Wales who can a e t no work at all are living on the dole. One of the most carefully guarded of Lang’s secrets is the precise number of people ' in New South Vyales whose only means of sustenance is to appear before the local police officer, and convince him that they cannot exist without a weekly Government order •for a few shillings worth of food. A week or so ago the nearest figure obtainable was 80,000 persons on the dole, ■but that is being added to every day as Government relief jobs dwindle and as industry slows down towards a standstill. . . The dole is not much more than bare sustenance. It will keep a family _fi°_ m starvation, but it will, not keep it in normal health and strength. Medical opinion in Sydney affirms that the attempt of probably 100,000 people to ■live on the amount of rations that arc represented by the dole tickets is havin<r a marked detrimental effect upon public health. Many of those on the dole are, of course, managing to make a more substantial living by spending their days fishing and rabbit hunting. Many others are hanging round the city streets industriously touching the more prosperous passers-by. Social workers with whom I talked in Sydney aie very afraid that many single young men, and even men with families, are so adjusting themselves to live upon the dole that there will bo no enthusiasm in their search for work when work is again available. DOLE TICKETS UNPOPULAR. As Lang’s relief jobs fail, as more factories reduce their stalls or close down altogether, the number thrown on the dole steadily increases, and Lang finds it ever more difficult to pay the tradesmen for the goods they hand out in return for the Government’s 1.0. U. s. >So far the retoil shops have managed to carry on, despite the £600,000 of unredeemed dole, tickets, because many wholesale houses have accepted dole tickets in settlement of their customers accounts. That practice is now being discontinued, since wholesale firms have collected as much as and more of Lang’s ■paper than they care to carry. Unless ■Lang can shortly make a substantial payment on account, the butchers and grocers will have no alternative but to decline, to exchange goods for Lang s promise to foot the bill. It is a sad sight to move about Sydney and its environs and see so much absolute destitution and idleness. But there is also a great world of wretchedness of which little is to be seen on ■the surface. It is amongst people who, Tess than 12 months ago, were comparatively well-to-do, who live in good houses in pleasant suburbs, who have been of good standing in their neighbourhood, been able to aftord their car, their modest social enjoyments and their habits of cultured living. Among many of these —professional men, highly placed employees and owners of businesses of their own there is now ■real poverty. I do not mean merely the serious curtailment of income, and the sacrifice of semi-luxuries, but no income at all and, by this time, no savings left to live upon. TRAGEDY AFTER TRAGEDY. I heard intimately of tragedy after tragedy. Of men shutting up their comfortable homes and taking their families to live in camps iu the country, because they could not face their tradesmen or their friends. Of the ■barter of furniture and motor cars, against a grocer’s or butcher s account because furniture and motor cars could not be turned into cash. I do not know how better to try to ■make you realise these things tlian just by telling the sorrowful confession of a friend of mine living in fortunate circumstances in one of Sydney’s best residential districts: "My wife and I,” he said, "cannot face going out to the houses of our friends; it is heartbreaking io see so many of them trying to hide their plight.” If in the past the people of New South Wales have been apt to regard politics as something that did not touch them very closely, they are not so now. Thcv are very much aware of Lang. In Sydney Lang is the one topic of

conversation on every street corner, in every bar, train, ferry boat, dub and home. The conversation is an unanimous but helpless howl of condemnation. At the moment Lang stands as low in public opinion in Sydney as a public man could stand. If the public could, politically speaking, get their hands on him they would, politically speaking, hang, draw and quarter him. Strong as the Labour party machine may be in the electorates of New South Wales it could not now hold for Lang a fraction of the votes of workers, mid-dle-class folk and small business people that must have been'cast for him in October. That is plainly enough the state of affairs at present. It is not a prophecy of what might happen if Lang goes to the country at some distant date on an election cry of his own choosing. He would be rash who would try to prophesy the political opinion of New South Wales more than a month ahead. INSTITUTION' OF SOVIETISM. But the point is that the people of New South Wales cannot, politically speaking, lay their hands on Lang. They are.only now wakening to the fact that during these last five r six years of their own casual, careless indifference, when even dirty polities was something of a joke, a group of bitter, scheming, greedy, ruthless and unscrupulous men, coldly intent on the destruction of the capitalist system and the substitution of Sovietism, ■ have bought, bribed and ■terrorised the machinery of Parliamentary government in New South Wales 'into an effective instrument for their own dictatorship. The story of these last five years, in ■which is involved a. story of faked ballots, of funds dishonestly controlled, of mysterious sources of the supply of money, of internal faction fights, of expulsions and vote-rigging, of bood'ling in money and public jobs, of the growing power of Garden, of the drifting together of Lang, Garden, Graves, Voight, “Plugger” Martin and Sleeman (who was sent to gaol in Queensland in 1922 for attempted bribery), had its final chapter written when the public of New South Wales fell for the dishonest propaganda of Lang at the elections in October, and put him into Parliament, entrenched and protected by an unassailable majority of terrorised supporters, each one of whom must do and ■vote exactly as the Lang group orders or get out of politics, which is his livelihood.

■ There are stories abroad of a revolt in tihe Labour Party in New South Wales that may depose Lang from his dictatorship. These ma; be largely discounted. Lang and his little staff control the machine. A word from them ■and any present Labour member in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly would lose the Labour endorsement. In New South Wales politics that, for a ■Labour man, means political extinction. With a majority of 20 votes in the Legislative Assembly Lang is, of course, safe from, and contemptuous of, any attack by the Nationalist and Country Party Opposition. LANG SECURE LN THE SADDLE. So far as political action can be summoned to the aid of the people of New South Wales,., there is every indication that Lang is secure in his dictatorship for his natural term of office, which has nearly two and a half years to run. The proof that “something” must happen in the meanwhile is in trying, to imagine New South Wales going on as now for another two and a half years.

Vigorous and general as it is, the condemnation of Lang,, the present determination to turn him out is not yet effectively organised, and has not yet found a rallying point. I was in Sydney during the protracted negotiations for securing unity amongst all parties in New South Wales opposed to Labour in the Federal sphere. The tortuous course of these negotiations, the fight that had to be made against personal and sectional jealousies, the failure to carry proposals of unity into the sphere of State politics, were all evidence that there is still much to be done 'before the anti-Lang forces can be marshalled under a common leader. There are able men in the State giving all their energy and time to trying to create a rallying point for public sentiment, men of affairs like Gibson of the All for Australia League, men of political experience like Bavin and Stevens, but the effectiveness of their leadership is being compromised by jealous feuds amongst their associates and followers. ■So the man in the street wears a badge in his buttonhole and wonders what on earth there is for him to do about it all. His mental condition was aptly described to me as ‘’numbness.’ I noticed myself how eager, he was to seize on any hope of something happening to free New South Wales from Langism, even if the hope had no better basis than faith in the fortuitous intervention of Providence. This attitude of mind was well illustrated when the Government Savings Bank closed its doors. There was very little public excitement or concern on the day that notices were posted that payment was suspended. Sydney immediately told itself that depositors would be able to get all their money out in a day or two. LANG’S ASSURANCES. It took nearly a week for a general realisation of the seriousness of the situation. Then, even after the terms were announced on which depositors who could swear that they were in a state of “dire necessity,” could draw a few pounds weekly of their own savings, a statement by Lang that “all depositors would be paid in full” had a marked effect of cheering Sydney up again. There seemed something very pathetic in Lang’s victims running to seek comfort in Lang’s flapdoodle assurances.

But, needless to say, a great deal of very serious thought is being given to the way out. The course of events is clear enough up to the point, when, because there is no more cash in the Treasury, Lang ceases to be able to pay in currency the salaries of those who carry on the services of the State. But past that point it is difficult to see.

Public opinion in Sydney leans strongly to the belief that it is both the right and the duty of the State Governor to declare that Lang has failed to carry on the good Government of the State and to give the electors an opportunity of choosing a new Parliament. Lang is even reported to have invited the Governor to take this course of action and to have added a sinister suggestion of the consequences to the Governor himself. SIDES ORGANISING FOR CLASH. It is a very open secret in Sydney that groups of private citizens, exmilitary men, business men and professional men, have organised themselves to defend property and support law and order. The Lang group is undoubtedly working along the same lines for very different purposes of its own. At a recent meeting at Newcastle, Hutt, who is officially entitled secretary of the Australian Labour Army, warned the workers that “the transition from the present system would not be accomplished by peaceful methods. It was necessary to have a Labour Army to prepare for thc taking over of the means of production for the use of the

workers. A mobile working class army was imperative to swing into action when necessary. Brigades and battalions were being formed . . • In these three articles I have frankly told of conditions in New South Wales as I saw them. It is possible to close the review on a note of reassurance. New South Wales is in its present predicament because the people have been careless of their political privileges and responsibilities. group of clever, unscrupulous revolutionists have taken advantage of that fact to filch the political power away from the people. But if, and when the attempt is made to use that power for the establishment of Sovietism in Australia—a. foreign fungus so alien to the character and spirit of Australians —the people of New South Wales will show just how few, how chicken-livered are those whom Lang can command. I had been in Sydney for some days, the Government Bank had closed its doors, it was impossible to be unaffected by tho atmosphere of scare and uncer-

tainty and soul sickness. Then, on the morning of April 25, I stood at the corner of Castlereagh and King Streets and watched nearly 30,000 men of the old A.I.F. march past. With these men marched tradition, the tradition of love for the clean name of Australia, of love for freedom, for right and justice. When the last man had passed it seemed as if those tramping feet had trod out the menace of Langism.