AN OPEN-AIR MEETING.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20168, 21 February 1931, Page 20

AN OPEN-AIR MEETING.

SPEECHES BY LABOUR

LEADERS.

Urging that children would lie denied j food and. clothing, that local trade , would ho paralysed, and that control o . the currency must be wrested from the bankers, representatives of the Labour i Party, from the eminence of a motor- • lorry in Cathedral square laßt evening, violently attacked "the raid on wages" wiich has been proposed by the Prime Minister. Between two and three hunted people attended the meeting, which was for the most part quiet and orderly. Messrs D. G. Sullivan, M.P., C. Morgan Williams, E. Parlane, and B. M. Macfarlane were the_ speakerß. Through some misunderstanding p - ceedings did not open untilabout half an hour after the advertised time. "Mr Forbes has just been attending the Imperial Conference, which cost the country £14,000," began Mr Macfarlane. "He left the country with a hu^e army of secretaries, and I think be did tint achieve very much and we have gained very little. Mr Forbes returned to find a huge army of unemployed— A woman: And you'd make more. You want to make a lot of loafers. 9 Mr Macfarlane attacked the unjust poll-tax for unemployment relief. » Unemployment B*ard had n^ er 0{)0 filled its promise to gxve work to 2000 men in Chriatchurch. Unemployment had not been dealt with in any shape or form. After March 81st the Board would not know what to do. The main remedy which Mr Forbes advocated was & wase reduction of 10 per cent,. The woman: should be 20 per cent, and you along with it. ■ Mr Macfarlane replied that he naa never understood what politics the lady was associated with. "Anyway. I'm not associated with ■yours/ she retaliated, talking for some minutes so loud and so fast that the speaker was drowned. , Mr Macfarlane considered that tne lady waß not taking the mooting in the , right spirit by making interjections and aß «You'te e frigWe|ied because yon can't . answer them," she charged. New (Zealand's Docile Workers. The reduction of 10 per cent, would not* remedy the situation,bw would ' make it worse, he continued. 1 aidious - form of propaganda his been " indulged-in by the newspapers, aid the -Markers , have* .swallowed it. • • • IJJ® workers of New Zealand seem to be the ■ most docile crowd you could ever coine across. . , . If -t&ey accept the reduction'" they: that's c oming_to , .thHnu* . . MxMachm said it wowd ■' Jake'six oi; twelve * 5Se r* t W»t>f cow." doYn \- ' ' 'Jin dncfiioi melons that workera wiUI J '• driypn 'from .jpheir Aomes. • ? • i i&t:" -ai reduce the; .unemployed to r ■ft. JilveWf - SJLuflv 'belnJ brotalised.'.. - Looking . I rrant to say that the ? BLitj ol ftiemaii of extreme & tbas eTr under' a Wk >j ava And wtot ho wrotß w I " 6 aofc «°. ven, . ed „ byifMliament. but by the banking.inr, 1 ! Jjatfarlane .retired a voice I .wAaed 'hijn'Lthat cap"aUst *eI - stated^ I s ® » PWPg, S® - of A .morfgageu 0 remodv was for the noopl® to take back 1 to be strangled and throttfefTby tfie hands of the dead, nor & to ' dudei) to thet of a Chinaman or a ,y> 'V' " '" i *• r ..v----\h: ' Mwwy octopM.". 9' S^e'nuwvey"octopus is crushing ' - yoncrashed the ,w>ii£trjr "When I waa '! cai't see' it,"^b'eganMr A voice {"You can't the Labojur secretaries ' either. They're getting ten ? ft they're not worth two. * ie», continued that the people bad bqOu too siqug and contented. Under e : the eajdtalist systfem 'periods of depreswon'frere inevitable. He attacke#tbe banking institutions at some length. , Ijhpre were only twa. means of altering r J> .tfess, thingsr-ravolution or evolution. *jj I jii this country there was no need for l ¥- Tovctotion, They mwt pat their names le . on the tall. , i • J®', ' , 09 to describe his . long -yVara -of tbiU - 4t Y'ou hear a. '\oi T 'jaboiit union Becxetaries," be said. "It's a thankless sort' of a job > and if a man's an .idealist bo r can't keep it np. tpaip $,5 week." ' "Bottbtng Workers' Pockets." ikj /"Mr ( Sullivan emphasised that "the ; 'iAbopr, out to fight the battle ■*l. (0#.,; . .in ;Jsrew Zealand, 'offljeq.* .-AVhlle 3i3ngJaijd, Mr Forbes had. met the and .the bankers x He'hiid'Tatnrned that the only Ij,', ntfw to saife Zealand from bank' d* Jfuptcy,• Ws'";by r ' his hands'into "v r,pockets o.f and taking wyweeded to spend on 6r<. la W|£k9S was made, it tantamount to and'"children of food S of-a nina Earning &B, H who bad to meet interest and ft said'that w tanta,-

mount to a 15 or 16 per cent, cut on food and clothing. Tha only way the Tory Party, which had dictated to Mr Forbes, could see to improve the position was to take tho clothes off children's backs'and the boots off their feet. The working" men, be emphasised, were partners in New Zealand's losses but not in her gains. During the war, when the average increase in prices was 85 per pent., the workers asked for a rise aiid were told that they had to make sacrifices at such a time. They were the only people making sacrifices, and they were always making sacrifices. In the three years before 1918, when the Government at last authorised an increase, the workers lost millions of pounds. A year or two later, when prices began to fall, the Government came to the aid of the financiers"and decreed that as prices fell wages should fall. The workers always paid. Interest—'the People's Burden. Interest, not wages, was the burden of the people. -Every £IOOO worth of agricultural land in New Zealand was mortgaged to the extent of £775. Farmers were paying £ 10,000,000 annually to receivers of interest. But while Mr Forbes put the big stick to the workers ;he went cap in hand to the capitalists and said: "Please be nice." He would not force a reduction of interest. ■ Exports had fallen, continued Mr Sullivan, but New Zealand would not improve its position by paralysing local trade. The storekeepers and business houses would inevitably lose. He pointed out that proportionately to the population, there were three times as many unemployed in England as in the United States of America where they had adopted the policy of high wages and wise spending. . "So much for the economics of the situation, add#d. "But what of the ethics! Why should the workers, the builders of the country, be the first to be hit! Are we going to stand,it? Its a terrific fight—we've got to fight every newspaper in the every capitalist, every banking institution, erals and Tories, for there's no difference between them now—but I call upon the workers to fight this damnable injustice as they've never fought before.