PUBLIC SERVANTS’ PRESIDENT DENIES COMMUNIST INFLUENCE

Grey River Argus, 16 April 1948, Page 7

PUBLIC SERVANTS’ PRESIDENT DENIES COMMUNIST INFLUENCE

WELLINGTON, April 15.

Allegations of Communist influence in the policy of the New Zealand Public Service Association were replied to by the president of the association (Mr J. P. Lewin) when he addressed the annual meeting of the Wellington section to-night. The concert chamber of the town hall would nut hold all the public servants almost 900, who had apparently come especially to hear Mr Lewin make a statement on Communism and civil liberties as they affected public servants.

Mr Lewin said that he was not a Communist. He said a mounting campaign of misrepresentation and crude slanders about the association made some statement necessary, as did the possibility that the hysteria which this campaign was generating would result in the victimisation of some law-abiding, innocent public servants. It was found desirable to state the association’s position and that of its office-bearers courageously and clearly. To this end a statement was dratted and published in the newspapers on Tuesday by the national executive. Mr Lewin invited the meeting to endorse the executive’s statement, and by so doing help prevent the association’s being swept info the current of party politics and sectionalism. At one time it was alleged that he himself ’was the tool of the Prime Minister' and the Minister of Finance. Now various political organs and organisations implied that he was a Communist and a subversive element. A recent attack by the New Zealand Retailers’ Federation was one or several made upon him. This federation had reason for disliking him m his present official capacity (Mr Lewin is Assistant-Director of Price Control). Mi- Lewin said he had nothing to hide. He was not a Communist and had never brought politics into the association. As far as he knew that statement covered also the two vicepresidents, the general treasurer and all the other members of the national executive. Napier M.P.’s Views on Communists

NAPIER, April 15

«rf some of these' wreckers got their way, and the Opposition gets into power, they will have made a start. The Communists know that they cannot work in a country that is prosperous, but with no stable government they can thrive In these remarks Mr Armstrong M.P.. summarised the possible result of com munistic influence on . in austij. in • pre-sessional address in the tj nil ■ “The man who loafs on the job betrays his boss and is a traitor to tne country,” Mr Armstrong continued, “but we haven’t got a great deal oi industrial trouble in this country. “There have been very few’ serious stoppages in the last 12 years, but I am not saying that there should not be less. We have to go on improving the machinery to prevent industrial troubles and allow’ them to be ironed out in a conciliatory way. “Relations between employers m 1948 are better than they ever have been,” he said. “There are mischiefmakers in this country who are not helpful to this Government, but are deliberately creating strife. “The people concerned are not supporters of this country; they are supporters of the U.S.S.R., and have received their instructions from that country.”