BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, JULY 1, 1949 “LET BATTLE COMMENCE”

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 6, 1 July 1949, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, JULY 1, 1949 “LET BATTLE COMMENCE”

There is evidence of a step-ping-up of the propaganda pressure from both sides of the political argument that is to be decided at the general election this year. Mr Holland’s no-confidence motion in the House of Representatives focussed public attention once more on .the fact that the Government had permitted itself to be governed by a group outside the House on a matter of vital importance without consulting the other half of Parliament.

The point is an important one, but Mr Fraser contrived to point out that no political party, in power or out of it, can afford altogether to ignore its rank and file.

It is certainly possible to paint a rosy picture of New Zealand today as compared with the New Zealand of 1935, but it would be just as wrong to blame the National Party for the depression of the early 1930’s as it. would be to blame the Government for the war just past.

In fact, something that the Labour Party seems to have overlooked in comparing itself with the Opposition is that the National Party not only was not the governing Party before 1935, but was not actually formed until the depression was well on the wane and the Coalition Government headed by Messrs Coates and Forbes a thing of the past. On the other hand, the National Party still persists in the equally outdated fallacy of trying to hitch the Labour Party and the Communist Party in double harness. Fapt of the matter is, it can hardly be denied, that both Parties in the House today are capitalist parties, with the difference that Mr Nash has some unorthodox methods of handling orthodox economics. It is much simpler to expound socialist theory from a soap box to an audience of industrial malcontents than to build it into the framework of the capitalist economy of a member of a capitalist family of nations who can see nothing basically wrong with capitalism. For that reason the red that once dyed the Labour Party is fading to a paler and ever paler pink. ? On the other hand, there'is a growing realisation amongst the “haves” that the “have-nots” have human rights, including the right to vote, and for that reason the “hide-bound Tory” of the more gruesome Socialist bedtime tales is a fast disappearing species. There is a wider realisation that, while Marx’s theory of class struggle might have been a true picture of the essential selfishness of human nature, it contains no constructive remedy for man’s economic ills. With that realisation the possibility of true co-operation between capital and labour is brought nearer, with the consequence that there is now munh more liberal thinking on both sides of the fence. It is well for us to see the bogeys that will be placed before us for the relatively harmless creatures they really are, and not allow ourselves to be frightened into voting for . anything other than the good of New Zealand.