Thames Star. THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922. COUNTRY PARTY.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15407, 15 June 1922, Page 4

Thames Star. THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922. COUNTRY PARTY.

If the action of the Auckland farmers in forming a separate political party has done nothing else it has created a terrible stir in the dovecots of the Reform Party. They see in this new development something that may prove to be a serious obstacle in the party’s path towards the end of the year. Its very existence implies that the Government of the day has not the v interests of the producers, and the I statements about the muddling of the | embargoes and so on will probably be used with some effect in the cortiing political fight. Criticism of this kind, from the farmers themselves, will have to be answered by the Government when an appeal is made to the country. It is a curious thing, and worthy of note, that the Reform journals while stressing the fact that the Farmers’ Union is not a political organisation, base their appeal for a reversal of the Provincial Executive’s decision chiefly on the fact that it will weaken the party in power. Apparently they think that the organisation as it exists is a powerful aid to the Reform Party, but in the same breath they declare that it is entiiely nori-political. For in-

land party journal takes up the same attitude. It holds that the Farmers’ Union is non-political, and cannot understand “why it should promote a separate political party to the injury of the Government,” clearly assuming that the union, as it stands, is a bulwark for that Government.

The Southern paper already quoted, in its extremity attributes the action of the Auckland farmers to rather sordid motives. “Mr Poison’s argument,” it says, referring to the recent conference, “proved powerless when weighed against the price of butter. For the president of the Auckland Union made no secret of the fact that the new move was inspired solely by motives of the most material kind.” There are country parties in the Australian and the Canadian Parliaments, and they control some of the provincial governments of the big Dominion, and it would be interesting to know if they, too, are “inspired solely by motives of the most material kina.” This is how the Christchurch paper sums up the movement: “It reminds one of Mr Dooley’s definition of the political principles of one of his friends, who was a candidate for Congress. Finnegan, he said, was ‘ out for Finnegan and the stuff’. The Auckland ‘Country Party’ is ‘out for the stuff,’ and its one virtue is that it is honest enough to say so. How it proposes to achieve its object by establishing an ‘independent party’ has yet to be explained.” When a responsible journal makes accusations of that kind it is not over-stating the case to say that the formation of the Farmers’ Party has created a flutter in the Reform dovecots. Indeed the flutter sounds very like a panic.