Labour head calls for new approach

Press, 1 March 1982, Page 6

Labour head calls for new approach

PA Wellington White-collar unions had developed to a huge extent since the founding of the Labour Party, said the party leader (Mr Rowling) at the week-end. Continuing his call for a change to the union affiliation concept, Mr Rowling chose the Wellington regional conference of the party to mention the white collar unions, naming the Post Office Union, the Public Service Association, the Shop Assistants’ Union, and insurance and banking unions. Mr Rowling questioned , whether the mechanism of union affiliation, participation by only a handful of unions, really gave the party contact, strength, and commitment "at the grassroots level of the union move- ' ment.”

He said he was also concerned that “we make it abundantly clear in the public mind that the Labour philosophy stands in absolute opposition to extreme? and increasingly alien elements of the very far Left.” Now was the “time of opportunity” for Labour, he said. “That opportunity can be wasted if we put our heads in the sand and. fail to be ruthlessly honest about ourselves. about our party, about our . purposes, and about the political mood of New Zealand in the 1980 s,” he said. Mr Rowling emphasised that as long as he led the party there was no way it would turn its back on the many thousands of working

trade unionists who shared Labours “fight and dream.” But he said New Zealand’s, working base had changed. “The great trade unions who so directly shaped our foundations and who generally remain with us in affiliation today, represent, very directly, the original economy of this country,” he said. Those unions were “the unions of the sea and of the waterfront.” But there were now tens of thousands of' “politically homeless”,,working people. “Affiliation as a concept does not, and in many cases simply cannot, reach those people. Only a drive for full membership on a new and less formal basis will achieve the desired result,” said Mr Rowling.