LABOUR PROTEST.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1996, 28 June 1919, Page 3

LABOUR PROTEST.

A STRONGLY-WORDED LETTER. ALLEGED UTTERANCES BY MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT. The folioAving letter, forwarded to the Acting-Prime Minister (Sir James Allen) and signed by Mr Robert M’Keen, secretary of the Wellington Labour Representation Committee, explains itself: — “Sir. —I have been instructed by the Wellington Labour Representation Committee to direct your attention to the folioAving statements reported to have been made by Air W. H. Field, M.P., in the course of a speech at the Mamiwatu Agricultural and Pastoral Association’s rooms in Palmerston North on Saturday, 14th June, and Avhich appeared in the colnms of the New Zealand Times of 17th Juno, and in the Mamiwatu Daily Times of IGth June. The following is the report from the New Zealand Times : ‘They (referring to the Labour Party) Avould like to attain their end Avith one fell sAvoop, and it Avas an end that could only mean civil Avar. Personally, he Avould shoulder his riJle to prevent, being dispossessed and robbed if those people had their Avay, and he believed every other farmer Avould do the same.’

“The Alanawatu Daily Times reports : “The Labour Party were getting in the thin end of the wedge, and if they were not careful there would 1)0 civil war. He was sure every man present would be prepared to shoulder his rifle to protect his rights sooner than let these gentlemen have their way. Bolshevism was spreading, and it urns their duty to see it never, got a hold in this country.’

“My committee considers that, if Mr Field was correctly reported, his declaration in favour of armed resistance to possible legal enactments of a Constitutionally-elected Government, if that Government happened to he a, Labour one, is a direct incitement to violence, social disorder, bloodshed and anarchy, and cannot he construed otherwise than as a threat that if (he Labour Party is retained to power at the next or any subsequent General Eleel ion, the then popularly elected, representative, a/;;-.! responsible Government of the country will he held up at the point of the riilc by Air Field and his fellow terrorists and enemies of constitutional and order - ly Government. The sinister design of (his particular agitator in the cause of vested interests and exploitation to terrify the general public with threats of rebellion and civil war into withholding support from the Labour Party at the ballotbox will meet, my committee believes, with the contempt it deserves at (lie hands of the people phut the advocacy of anarchial, bloodthirsty policy of deliberately plunging I lie country into revolution and chaos on behalf of properly interests, so eold-hloodily forsha (lowed and outlined by Mr Field, if the newspaper reports arc accurate, will be, my committee fears, followed by the most disastrous social consequences, if your Government allows it to pass unnoticed and permits such propaganda to be carried on.

“Labour considers that faith in the accepted form of Government as representing 1 the paramount will of the people will be destroyed if threats of armed revolt can be made with impunity. Citizens have already been sentenced to terms of imprisonment in New Zealand under the Crimes Act and under the War Regulations for utterances not onehundredth part so subversive of law and order as tbo.se accredited to Mr Feild. . “My committee desires to know what action, if any, Cabinet intends to take in the matter’, or whether it is content to enforce one code of law for the representatives of Labour, and another, entirely opposite, for the representatives of Capital and Property. —I am, yours faithfully (signed) Robert M’Keen, Secretary.”