WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 14 April 1928, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS

THE GENERAL ELECTION. I NCR EAS INC INT KR EST. (Special to " Guardian.”) WELLINGTON, April 12. The announcement that a caucus ot the Reform Party is to he held here on Tuesday next has set the local gos-. sips discussing parties and politics with renewed zest. Jt is understood that the main purpose of the caucus is to bring the members of the dominent party to some delinite understanding in regard to the licensing question which last year came perilously near to wrecking the solidarity of Reform. It is rumoured that the Prime Minister is ready to make some minor concessions to the prohibitionists among his friends, but that he will expect a certain measure of reciprocity in return. What this really means can be only conjectured—and the field for such an exercise is wide enough—but people, apparently speaking with some authority. declare there will he no weakening in the opposition to the extension of the period between licensing polls nor to the abandonment of the hare majority. On these two points, it is said, a majority of the memliers of the. House are definitely pledged and no amount of ministerial persuasion will move them. SELECTING' CANDIDATES.

ft is stated that the question of selecting candidates to represent the Reform interests at the approaching election will be brought up at the caucus, quite possibly by the Prime Minister himself, who has been given to understand, so the story runs, that several of his present supporters, who merely vote at their party’s call, have not the approbation of some of the most generous friends of ltoform. The matter is one of extreme delicacy. no one caring to disparage his political allies, however homely they may he, hut it is being put about, seemingly with- ministerial authority, that every member of the party who lias been submissive to discipline will he nominated again for the seat he has occupied, and the powers behind the throne have become alarmed at the prospect of perpetual occupation under such a lease. The leading Reform newspaper had something to say about the matter last week and its suggestion that the electors were entitled to a voice in the selection of their candidates may have impressed Mr Coates. THE UNITED PARTY.

Although the New Zealand United Political Party has not yet disclosed the names of the candidates with whom it is going to contest “every seat in the Dominion at the next general election,” it appears to have quite a little army of officials and a happy knack of winning the hospitality of the newspapers and the attention of their readers. As an example of its enterprise in these respects one may take a statement furnished to the “ Post ” last evening by the “chairman of the United Political Organisation.’’ The hearer of this title complained that the Hon. A. D. McLeod had described the United Party as a! body without- form and void. “The t nited Political Oiganisation and the l nited Palliamentary Party that it will support at the next elections.” he retorted, ''assumed shape and form some time ago and are daily growing stronger. On the other hand, the Reform League and the party it supports are disintegrating so rapidly that it will ho impossible to locate them.” 'let Reform still nourishes and the United l’arlv remains unidentified.

LABOUR. Meanwhile the Labour Party heartened. so it says, by a particularly encouraging annual contcrence. is pursuing the even tenor of its way without paving any serious attention to the thunder of the Welfare League or the scolding ol the newspapers. The election, as president of the party, of the Hev. A. K. Archer, the Mayor of Christchurch, a sane socialist who takes off his hat to the flag and pays deference to Royalty, wasi a happy tactical move on the eve of a general election, and the -emphatic refusal to have anything to do with the Communists or their extreme doctrines will go far to repair the indiscretions of some ol the less amenable members of the organisation. But, to he quite frank, the Labour Party, ‘‘as at present constituted,” has no more chance of ousting Reform in the near future than it has ol remodelling the constitution of the Dominion in a single silting of Parliament. In Opposition it has helm veil admirably, on the whole, hut to reach the Treasury Benches it must purge itself of the Conservatism it imagines to he Democracy.