LEGION IN POLITICS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20296, 4 May 1934, Page 8

LEGION IN POLITICS.

Comment by Labour Party Secretary. Reference to the intention of the New Zealand Legion to take an active part in the next election was made this morning by the secretary of the North Canterbury branch of the Labour Representation Committee (Mr R. Macfarlane). Mr Macfarlane said that Dr Campbell Begg’s statement concerning the Legion’s aims was along the usual lines of those issued by the New Zealand Legion, although the Legion had never before expressed its intention of running candidates at the next election. It would be very interesting, said Mr Macfarlane, to see which candidates the Legion opposed. The New Zealand Labour Party had declared the Legion to be a political party some time ago, and was impossible for any member of the Labour Party to be a member of it. Indeed, it was against the Labour Party’s constitution to belong to any other party which intended to run candidates for any election. Commenting on the argument advanced by Dr Campbell Begg concerning the elimination of the party system, Mr Macfarlane said they could see what had happened in European countries as the result of similar advocacy. There one party governed with the complete suppression of all other parties. In those countries, also, the solution of the economic problems seemed as far off as ever, and the people found themselves saddled with Governments who maintain their power by force. It was almost impossible to get rid of them, in fact, except by superior force. Mr Sullivan’s Comment. The decision of the New Zealand Legion to nominate its own candidates for Parliamentary seats at the next general election was deplored to-day by Mr D. G. Sullivan, M.P., who is one of the whips of the Labour Party Mr Sullivan said he was disappoints to learn that there was to be a third party in the :eld to distract the mind of the people from the straight-out issue of the Government and its reactionary policy on the one hand and the alternative Government of Labour and its policy on the other. “ I feel, however,” he added, “ that despite any such action by the Legion, public opinion throughout the length and breadth of the country is not only utterly sick of the Tory Coalition policy, but so definitely pro-labour that nothing at all can prevent the signal triumph of the Labour Party at the next Parliamentary polls and the return of a Labour Government. I never felt so positively sure of anytring since I have been in public life.” (A statement concerning the Legion's policy appears on Page 4.)