Tramway Appeal Board.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20204, 15 January 1934, Page 6

Tramway Appeal Board.

Dear Sir, —In a leaderette you said it was quite democratic for the present Tramway Board to appoint its own representatives to the Board of Appeal, and that you could sympathise with Mr Archer were he not too anxious to make every post a winning post. I think you were mistaken. Mr Archer’s request is not democratic. State, representing the people, appointed a representative for a term. To suggest that he should resign because there has been a change in the personnel of the board is ridiculous. The Appeal Board has nothing to do with the management of the trams e *cept to see that the staff gets justice. And justice the staff could not get if members of the Appeal Board had biased minds. Mr Archer’s argument is on a par with the argument used by the Southern States rj f America when they rose in rebellion against the North to manage their own affairs. It took a civil war to teach them that democracy was not what they thought it was, but was what Abraham Lincoln thought it was. Lincoln was fully aware of the weaknesses of democracy. But evet» he never thought that democracy could be used as an argument to weight the acales of justice against working men. Mr Archer's request to a member of the Appeal Board to resign was simply a piece of colossal impudence. The people appointed Mr Hayward and if he resigned and made it porsible for two biased minds to be thrown in the scales against working men appealing against victimisation would be a blow at democracy and a travesty of justice.—l am, etc., CRITIC. The correspondent has distorted the “ Star’s ” comment. This letter is referred to editorially,—Ed. “ Star,” _