“MONEYED INTEREST”

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 273, 23 November 1935, Page 5

“MONEYED INTEREST”

A Plan Disclosed

“LABOUR’S GUNS READY”

MR. J. W. MUNRO’S VIEWS

(Per Press Association. _> DUNEDIN, Last Night.

Disclosure of a plan to deal with 'moneyed interests’ should they offer resistance to the policy of a Labour Government, was dramatically made by Mr. J. W. Munro, Labour candidate for Dunedin North, at a meeting last night. Mr. Munro said that Labour “had its guns ready.” In certain circumstances it would assume control of the Reserve Bank and, if the directors opposed Labour’s instructions, they might find themselves in prison on a diet of bread and water. “After the elections at which Labour is returned,” Mr. Munro said, “the newspapers of this country, in their leading articles, will start advising people to get their money out of the banks before it disappears.”

“I am not going to threaten,” he added later, “but we might teach the newspapers in New Zealand a lesson. They want it badly. “What happened in New South Wales,” Mr. Munro declared, “can happen in New Zealand, but we have got our guns ready and they will get shot. I don’t mean that in any other than the metaphorical way. If they start a run on the Savings Bank of New Zealand as they did in New South Wales, in two days it would have to put up its shutters until we could call Parliament together. Then we will l amend (tflie Act to get control of the Reserve Bank. We have got our guns ready and they will find the laws which they put in the statute book used against themselves.”

The candidate alleged that the run on the New South Wales Savings Bank during the period of the Lang Government had been deliberately engineered by the Press and moneyed interests of the State, one of the methods being the use of faked advertisements in the newspapers.

“After the window-smashing in Auckland,” Mr. Munro said, “the Government passed what was called the Preservation of the Peace Act, under which any industry can be declared an essential industry, and it is treason to interfere with it. We warned the Government at the time that it. was introducing something which some day might be used against itself. We shall use that power ourselves, and somebody may be put in gaol who leasts expects it to-day. It might be the board of directors or it might be the manager, if any one of them refuses to carry out our instructions. We will deal with them as some of our Communist friends were dealt with. We’ll feed them on bread and water for a while until they realise that they have got to obey the will of the people.”

In a later stage Mr. Munro said: “If anybody starts in New Zealand what has been done in England, we will,say: ‘Do your damnedest, but we will carry cut our policy and fight you to the last ditch.’ If we can’t carry ou‘ our policy we’ll go to the electors and get a mandate to do it, and, if we can’t do it, then the only thing to do will be to get out and smash things.”

After saying that they wanted to do it in a constitutional way if necessary, Mr. Munro added: “If, after this election, the Labour Party does not get a majority, I will advise Mr. Savage not to accept an offer. Let us have another election. Give us -a mandate so that we can carry out our policy; and, if you don’t then you can stew in your own juice.”