LABOUR MOVEMENT

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 155, 27 March 1939, Page 10

LABOUR MOVEMENT

Important Conferences To Begin Next Week MEETING IN WELLINGTON Starting next week • and exlending over a fortnight, vital discussions affecting the Labour movement will take place in Wellington, when the annual conferences of the New Zealand Federation of Labour and the New Zealand Labour Party will be bold. They will be attended, in the aggregate, by upward of GOO delegates. Formed three years ago 'and replacing the old New Zealand Alliance of Labour, the New Zealand Federation of Labour is the mouthpiece of the Labour movement in industrial affairs. Its hand was strengthened as a result of the decision of the annual conference of the Labour Pdrty last year that all remits dealing with industrial questions should be referred to the Federation of Labour for consideration and a report, a decision which will also overcome unnecessary duplication between the conferences.

It is expected that a major topic of discussion by the federation will be the proposal of the Minister of Labour, Mr. Webb, to bring down legislation in the next session of Parliament dealing with the Apprenticeship Act. The federation has already had the question in hand, having drafted ' proposals for consideration by the trades councils affiliated with it, and which are to be submitted to the Minister. It has already been announced that it is the intention of the Minister to convene a conference of interested parties for the purpose of a round-table discussion in an endeavour to bring Hie Act into line with modern industrial requirements. Communists and Farmers’ Union. Two subjects set down for consideration by the Labour Party conference are of general interest and relate to Communists and the Farmers’ Union. They are: — That the ban on the Communists Party, the Friends of the Soviet Union and other Communist auxiliaries be removed with the object of forming a united front. That the Farmers’ Union be declared a political body.

The attitude of the Labour Party toward Communists has already been classified at previous conferences, and it is the general opinion that there is little likelihood of any change, the party being opposed io their admission.

At the 1937 conference similar remits supported by five branches were overwhelmingly defeated on the ground that the organization which went under the name of the Communist Party in New Zealand had in the past been bitterly opposed to Labour, the doctrine of Communism being for revolutionary violence and dictatorship as opposed lo the Labour Party’s principle of constitutional and democratic action. The remit to this year’s conference is supported by 23 affiliated organizations, 18 of which are in the Auckland province. The increased support of Communists in Auckland, where in recent months an attempt was made, allegedly by Communists, to secure control of Labour organizations, is not likely to be overlooked by the delegates to the conference. Whether this and lite fact that the Communist Party in New Zealand openly supported I lie Labour Party at Hie Parliamentary elections has caused embarrassment, should lie clarified by Hie voting of Hie delegates at the Easter conference. The remit relating lo the Farmers’ Union has been sponsored by on? branch If carried. Hie effect would be that, farmers who are niemhers of the Labour Party would have to withdraw from one organization or the other.