LABOUR AND LIQUOR

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 165, 7 April 1919, Page 8

LABOUR AND LIQUOR

ADDRESS BY MR. H. E. HOLLAND,

"Where Labour Stands on the Liquor Question" was the title of an address delivered in the Empress Theatre last night by Mr. 11. E. Holland, M.P. The house was well filled, and the speaker received a very attentive hearing. Mr.' Holland said that he would speak not oiiy as a member of tho Parliamentary Labour Party, but also as a member of the national executive of the New Zealand Labour Party. Because the Labour Party was made up of a membership that included supporters •of continuance, State control, prohibition with compensation, and prohibition without compensation, the party as an organisation took no side, in the present conflict. In 1017, tho party's annual conference had decided that every section of the people should be given the right to vote on tho liquor question, nud it had been decided to add a plank to the platform to that effect. As a result it had been untruthfully alleged by some that the party had made State control a plank of its platform. All that had been done was to insist that the decision on the liquor question must be a democratic decision. The Labour Parly's national executive acting in accordance with the spirit of the resolution passed by the conference, had urged that four issues should bo placed on the ballot-paper, viz.: continuance. State control, prohibition with compensation, and prohibition without compensation; and had further urged that voting should be in , the order of preference. A Labour petition had been accordingly circulated. When some 110,000 signatures had been obtained, tho influenza epidemic had broken out, and hiul made it necessary to abandon the petition. The Government had eventually adopte.d the official prohibitionists' seheino, and the result had been that whatever decision was obtained it would not lie satisfactory, because of tho disfranchising nature of the Act. The Labour Party could never accept as satisfactory an alleged referendum in which tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of the peonlc were denied tho Tight to voto for what they wanted, but were compelled to vote for one flf two things, neither of which they werein favour ot. Tho present Act laid it down that if national prohibition wns carried on April 10, there was to bo no further vote on the question, Tho Labour Party would not stand for that principle for a moment. They insisted that whenever, say, not less than ten per cent, of tho voter* desired any m."t<er to be submitted to the people, tho right to vote must, be established. In conclusion. Mr. Holland urged his hearers not to forget that tho Labour movement was a bigger and better thing than tho liquor movement or the prohibitionist movement.