THE WORKERS’ PROTEST MEETING.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18817, 4 March 1931, Page 12

THE WORKERS’ PROTEST MEETING.

To the Editor of the “ Timaru Herald.” Sir, —Mr Carr’s smart reply to my perfectly innocent suggestion that the other side should be invited to have their say at the workers’ protest meeting, compels me to acknowledge the shrewdness of the foes of Labour about town who gleefully remark that if they can get the Member for Timaru to open his mouth, he is certain to put his foot into it! Mr Carr made a good point of the refusal of the organisers of the economy meeting to invite representatives of the workers to put their views to the meeting. I believe, outside the exclusive circle of Mr Foots and his Chamber of Commerce with its half a dozen vocal members, and perhaps Mr Cecil Wood’s charmed circle of high financial experts, the public agreed with Mr Carr. Why, then, try to be funny in dealing with a sane suggestion? Assuming his best cynical style, Mr Carr says that “if any apologists for employers’ associations, in whose ostensible interests the Prime Minister is acting, wish to confess their sins or to make further excuses for them, I have no doubt they will be given a very patient hearing by this mass meeting of workers.” How funny! This is the sort of cheap wit in which Mr Carr excels, but something better is required of an M.P. representing an important place like Timaru. But how comes it that Mr Carr replies? Is he the organiser of the meeting? The reply, of course, settles the issue. No one would come in face of such insults. The clever Labour M.P. for Timaru has very considerately opened the door for the “apologists,” as he calls them, to escape. He hadn’t the sense to see what a master stroke it would have been to get Mr Foote, Mr Wood and Mr Burnett in front of a mass meeting of workers. It is sun-clear that Mr Clyde Carr does not want the other side, but hopes to have the whole stage to himself. If ever a man opened his mouth to put both feet into it, Mr Carr has done it this time. Can you, sir, imagine a Member of Parliament approaching a big national issue in such a classconscious spirit? I wonder what Mr Carr would have said if, in reply to his reasonable protest that the workers were not represented at the recent meeting, the chairman of the economy meeting hadtsaid, with a touch of biting sarcasm: “If the apologists for the workers wish to confess their sins or to make further excuses for them, let them come along, and get down at the penitent form.” Mr Carr would have boiled over with righteous indignation, and rightly so. His reply to my suggestion convicts him of the grossest bad taste and the most flagrant insincerity. He will not extend to the other side, without a display of cynical smartness, the rights he claimed for his own side. In effect, Mr Carr says: “This is my meeting, but if the sinners on the other side desire to come in, a penitent form will be provided.” This figure of speech, of course, appeals to Mr Carr’s ministerial training. His reply has given the whole show away. I see through the little stunt. The mass meeting is Socialistic propaganda, and no one is wanted who might “put it across” Mr Carr or stand between him and the limelight. I wager the broad acres of South Canterbury to the redflagged Trades Hall that Mr Carr is out to use the extremity of the people as vote-catching propaganda, and that is why he meets my well-meant suggestion with a thinly-veiled insult and a display of hair-brained wit.—l am, MORE LIGHT. Timaru, March 3.