WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 19 October 1927, Page 4

WELLINGTON TOPICS

LABOUR RALLY. IMPROVING THE OCCASION. (Special to “ Guardian.”) WELLINGTON. Oct. 17. | The meeting in the Empress Theatre last night—Sunday—at which Mr Leej Martin, the new member for Raglan in the House nl Representatives, expounded the reasons why he. though .1 working tanner, was "in the Labour Party,” was thoroughly representative of the personnel and the aspirations of the growing body ol restless reformers —spelt with a small " R ” —whose extremists arrogate to themselves all the candour, all the philanthropy and all the other cardinal virtues oi public service. There were a considerable number of haldheads among the six or seven hundred people present, a dozen University students, a very fair bevy of hidies. who probably, would rather he ealletl women, half a score ol members of Parliament, and a mere sprinkling of timid scoffers ; but the bulk ol the audience consisted ol sturdy, bright-eyed, stalwart young fellows, who needed no repentance so far as the Labour gospel was concerned, and imparted to their applause something more than mere noise. Early aiiitals at the theatre were not entertained by the orchestral music with which the building is popularly associated, but with strident invitations to buy the •• New Zealand Worker” at threepence or the Law and Commandments oi emancipated Labour at a somewhat larger sum. r I he salesmen appaientl\ did good business and their customers seemed satisfied. THE NEW MEMBER.

Mr Martin was introduced to the audience bv the chairman presenting in a few brief sentences the lile history of the new member, who subsequently protested only against the.omission of the fact that he had been an active officer of the Salvation Army and retained pleasant recollections of his term of service. The successor of the late Hon. R. E. Bollard in the representation of Raglan is not. an orator, nor even a fluent speaker, bill he is a plain, persuasive, sufficiently accurate talker with a good voice and nice sense of humour that will commend him to the House and the Press Gallery. Tlis acknowledgment ol tin l debt of gratitude he owed the Prime Minister for the assistance given him during the retent Raglan campaign was a delightfully funny effort without the slightest suspicion of exultation or disparagement. “Io Mr ( oates, he said in effect. ttic l.atiour movement owes a. great deal in connection with the Raglan election. Wherever he spoke during the campaign the Labour vote was increased, and even at Huntly, where we always have had a strong lead, our

majority was improved. The Prime Minister has many good qualities, apart from polities, and 1 feel already he is my personal friend.” Much of the quality of Mr Martin’s humour is lost in quotation, but it'Suffers nothing from its absence of sting. i WHY IN LABOUR PARTY. I The now Labour member’s story ol why he is in the Labour party ooou-j pied only a little over an hour—some-' thing less than the average church service—hut it covered the whole ol the points the speaker wished to make, fI is sympathies always had been with the under-dog, principally, he suggested, because he had been an under-dog for most of the time himself, and when

he took up a small farm in the Wai.lcato district, fifteen years hack lie set himself when milking cows, tending pastures and doing the hundred other things necessity imposed upon him, to examine the problems besetting both the farmer and the labourer. Constant work, much of it hard work, and hard thinking had brought him to the conclusion that the lot of the farmer was very much the lot of the labourer and that the salvation of them both lay in their co-operation in an effort to improve their conditions. The Raglan election had shown definitely that many other farmers, in addition to himself, had been thinking along these lines, and that many people, neither farmers nor labourers, were tending the same way. He believed that what had happened in his own constituency was

going to happen in many other constituencies at the next general election, and that farmers, as well as workers, would have good reason to rejoice over

tlioir ciiKincipntion. fX THK V.F.UI XXIXG. His devotion to tin' Labour Party, whicli iilivioiisly was whole-hearted, lint I not blinded Mr Marlin to tlio great services rendered to the workers and the farmers hy the pioneers of progressive legislation on their behalf, lie mentioned the achievements of Mr fiallanee and Mi' Scddon, and the cheap money legislation of Sir Joseph Ward —of the Liberal-Labour Governments as he styled the administration of these lenders—as the foundation stones in a great advance that must he continued hy the Labour Party with grateful recollections of work done by the pioneers. lie emphasised the 099-years lease as the ideal of land tenure, which Labour should restore, and mentioned cheap money as the great need of the man on the land at the present time. "The inflation of land values,” he declared. “ is not the principal bane of the country at the present time; it is the inflation of money values.” Mr Martin was not quite so coherent as ho had been on other matters when he turned to the vast fiscal problem. Apparently he would have New Zealand independent of all outside influences in this respect and just how he would at- ( tack this gigantic reform he did not explain. Hut his audience was impressed and satisfied, and never was vote of confidence in the Labour Parly more emphatically recorded-