The Dominion. TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1920. THE POLICY OF OFFICIAL LABOUR

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 247, 13 July 1920, Page 4

The Dominion. TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1920. THE POLICY OF OFFICIAL LABOUR

Although they may not be in any sense an expression of reprcsenta- ■ iiivo opinion, the resolutions passed at the annual conference of the New Zealand La-bout Party are instructive as showing how far and m what direction the extremists who passed them would like to go it they had the power. Apparently the conference devoted much of its time to the discussion of questions of defence and international policy, but in their pronouncements on these questions its delegates indicated pretty clearlv the general conditions thev arc desirous of imposing ou New Zealand. It is illuminating, for instance, that they condemned unreservedly all forms of defence, training and preparation. They not only expressed their emphatic disapproval of the programme of the National Defence League, but repealed their own "plank" dealing with the institution of a citizen army on a voluntary basis. Not content with advocating a plan of defence which experience has shown to be .unworkable, they now urgethat the Dominion should cast off every means of defence. If the Labour Party delegates had been in any degree influenced cy common sense and an elementary regard for consistency, this remarkable proposal would have been sufficiently discredited by the fact that Labour and other bodies arc at present demanding in emphatic terms that s.tcps should be taken to prevent any further influx of Asiatic immigrants. Only a few weeks ago, for instance, the Auckland waterside workers decided that after a certain date they would refuse to work ships bringing Asiatics to the Dominion, and in endorsing and approving this decision the Franklin branch of the Amalgamated Society of Bailway Servants deplored "the fact that Labour should have to make the first move necessary for the creation of a white. New Zealand.'' There is no doubt that means will have to be found of setting definite limits fo Asiatic immigration, and it is particularly clear that the stability of a policy of complete or partial exclusion depends absolutely upon an adequate system of defence. In denouncing the maintenance of an efficient Territorial force—a citizen army in the best sense cf the term—the Labour Party conference did not oppose militarism, but declared that this country ought to bo thrown defenceless to any Asiatic or other Power that cares to pick it up a few years hence. Whatever they may call themselves, people who advocate such a policy arc not an important factor in New Zealand national affairs, but it is certainly as well that they should stand cutin their true character if only that any danger of their influence extending may be averted. • • t All the resolutions passed by the conference bear witness to the dominating desire of its delegates to blacken the fair fame of their own country and glorify the enemy nations with which it and other democracies were lately engaged in a lifc-and-death struggle. T'hcso ruling tendencies are notably apparent in a resolution relating to Russia. Evidently in the- eyes of these selfstyled representatives of New Zealand' Labour the Bolshevik revolution in Russia is a pattern and an example to be emulated, and hero again their attitude is very much better dofincd than in the _ obscure and ambiguous phrases which constitute their customary stock-in-trade. It is known to all the world that the Bolshevik regime in Russia is a bloodthirsty dospotism, established by a Bmall minority of tha

population, and that its fruits thug 1 far have, been seen in massacre, ajv 1 pulling famine and economic chaos, ] the unchecked ravages) of disease, , and the enslavement of the working ■ population. _ The chief agents of tlm ' tyranny which for the time beina ! holds sway in Russia are at no uains ' to .hide its real character. In ono ' of its latest official utterances tbn ] Russian Communist Party laid it down that:— The Communist party is an rirganisn- ' ttou uniting within its ranks only the .Vanguard of the proletariat and tho poorer peasantry, that portion of these classes which consciously strives to introduce tho Communist programme into actual life. Tho Communist party , makes it. its aim to secure a dominant influence and full control over all Labour organisations, • This "full control" is being developed meantime on the lines of labour conscription, together with the- movement of bodies of workers from place to place at the will of central authorities, and the determination by these authorities of wages and 'working conditions. Whole-hearted admiration and approval of those who have brought Russia to her present despcratc_ pass is no doubt in perfect keeping with tho expressed dc- • sire of the delegates to the New Zealand Labour Party confcrenfce to expose, their own country without defence to any predatory Pov-er that comes to attack it. In itself suiii nri attitude invites only contempt and ridieutei but while it would be a cruel slander on the wage-earners of the Dominion to suggest that they were in any respect fairly represented at the Labour Party conference, they are certainly _ neglecting their own as well as national interests in allowing such perverted doctrine? to be propounded in the name of Lahour and with a semblance of official sanction.