PLEA FOR DARKNESS

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1931, Page 7

PLEA FOR DARKNESS

LANG PLAN CHAMPIONS. THE BASHERS APPROVED. To what exent are the “Lang Planners” linked with the Communists? This is a question much discussed in the New South Wales sphere of the Federal election campaign.. Mr. Arthur Griffiths, a Labour Minister of twenty years ago, writes to the Sydney Morning Herald: “Mr. Donald Grant , is, of all the men in his party, the particular individual whom. Mr. Lang desires to honour. The executive of the New South 'Wales Labour Party only a few weeks ago gave Mr. Grant a seat on the Municipal Council of Sydney by selecting him as the party s candidate for a safe Labour division, and Mr. Lang has since induced His Excellency to appoint him a member of the Legislative Council. From all this it is abundantly clear that Mr. Grant stands high in the councils and confidence of the Premier and his party. Now on three separate Sundays within the last few months I have heard this same gentlemen, from his platform in the Domain, passionately beseeching his hearers to purchase from the distributors in the crowd the People’s Weekly—-The Official Orean of the Communist Party of Australia, Australian Section of the Communist' International. Mr. Grant, assured his audience that from that journal they would learn the truth which, he alleged, is purposely suppressed by the Sydney daily papers (including, I assume, the official organ of the pa.ity to which he, Mr. Grant, claims to belong). On one occasion recently, I saw this gentleman himself distributing the paper, while a colleague was addressing his audience from his platform. It is of course quite justifiable for anyone to advocate the purchase of any registered journal anywhere at any time, but I do say that when a„ public man sees fit to do so, it would be overstraining human creduliy to expect the public to believe that he is opposed to the policy, principle's, and methods whic.i such journal is published to propagate.” ,r ■ Editorially, the Sydney Morning Herald states that Mr. Lang’s' appointments to the Legislative Council “include Mr. Donald Grant, who served over three years in gaol on conviction of having, with others of the I.W.W "ang, attempted to set Sydney on fire, and to excite sedition in 1016. Now a member of the Legislative Council by grace of Mr. Lang’s nomination, he still preaches sedition on behalf of the Communists. Another ‘Lang planner’ candidate fori Cook is Mr. J. S. Garden, who affirmed last January in the Herald that lie was still a member of the Moscow International. He is the man who, with all his influence on the executives of the Sydney trades and Labour Council and the State A.L.P., pleaded to the Yallourn electricity workers in Victoria in May, 1929, for ‘Just one night of darkness in Melbourne.’ Then, he said, ‘there would be a few more new suits in the citv,’ and ‘the workers would have a few’ gold watches, too.’ Not content with "that as his contribution to the atmosphere of the timber strike, he declared in Newcastle, in July, 1929, his approval of the basher gangs then trying to terrorise Sydney. ‘I call them men,’ he said. T wish I had the guts they have. I raise my hat to them.’ “In his hurry to realise ‘spolis for the victors’ (Mr. Garden”s slogan for the last citv council elections), Mr. ■Lano- has ‘'definitely identified his ‘plan’ with this self-proven aider and abettor of industrial violence. Is it anv wonder that the ‘Lang plan’ foundered . the Government Savings Bank ? Is it any wonder that throughout the length and breadth of the country Lanyism is identified in the public mind as the ally of disloyal elements in the community who have long ago declared war on its peaceful progress?”