Hits Out at Extremists.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 September 1920, Page 4

Hits Out at Extremists.

N.S.W. LABOUR. PREMIER’S. SPIRITED STATEAIENT.

! SYDNEY, August 24. I For a considerable time there Iras has been a likelihood of a definite broach between the moderate and extreme sections of the Labour Party in this State and the threat of trouble has not been at all removed by the outspoken statement of the Labour Premier Mr John Storey, this week. Alt- Storey, is a man of sane and moderate views who believes in constitutional action as against revolution. His relationship with the Prince of Wales was interesting and amusing. They met each other with obvious mutual suspicions and uneasiness. Air Storey apparently felt that there was nothing between him, as a leader of advanced democracy, arid the Prince, the representative of aristocracy. 'Flic Prince just as obviously did not know what reception he was going .to get from the head of a party, which, notoriously, includes some rampant revolutionaries and disloyalists. They ended up by becoming the. warmest friends | possible—and it is a genuine friendship each mail appreciating the manly, human qualities of tile other. The Prince told a. private gafliering in Sydney that the Labour Premier was “the most likeable Bolshevik lie had ever met.” Air Storey, however, has been embarrassed ever since taking office bv the activities of liis noisy extremist friends. They have been making of themselves a greater and greater public nuisance; and lately, since the release of their I. W. W. friends, they have put no check on their perfervid oratory. Last Sunday, in the Domain, they “cut loose completely and threatened the community and the Empire with Flood and revolution. Some of the newspapers were foolish enough to publish an extensive report of some of these wild speech es, and Air Storey deemed it necessary to make a statement. He referred first of all to certain resolutions in favour of a “go-slow” strike against deportations passed the other day by the Sydney Labour Council. This body has been captured by the extremists and is trying to make the Labour Government do its bidding. AIT Storey points out that the deportations are ended. “As for the goslow resolutions, they are equally to be .nsregaTded. Does Air Garden (leader of the extremists, nil ex-Aleth-odist minister, by the way) think for a moment that industrious men on piecework are going to reduce their income just to accommodate the fancies of his disordered brain? 1 have great faith in -the working man of Australia, and I do not think he will allow himself to be led astray by wild and lawless schemes. . . As for the wild and fantastic outpourings of Air Donald Grant (released I.W.W. criminal), I repudiate them utterly, and I think it can also be said that they are the negation of the feeling of the Australian Labour Party. I think Air Grant must have found prison a very snug and habitable place, and that his outbursts are due to a state of frenzy because.his friends would not lot him stay there. I'shall not place difficulties in Alt Grant’s way if be wants to return. A man who delights in blood, dreams of blood talks blood, and wants to wallow in blood can always be accommodated at the expense of the State.” Which is practically an open challenge from the leader of the moderates to the restless extremists.