CONDEMNATION OF EXTREMISTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2339, 8 October 1921, Page 2

CONDEMNATION OF EXTREMISTS.

REFERRING in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, to the financial stringency and unemployment, Mr McLeod suggested that the Government could not fairly be blamed for the movement of prices. He quoted figures to show how serious was the position from the point of view of the farmers. It had been a matter for very keen regret to the farmers that they had been compelled to reduce wages, but he was glad lo be able to say that in most eases the farm workers had faced the position in a reasonable way. Bn! an attempt was being, made now to induce the shearers to refuse to work under the award that had been made by the Arbiiralion Court to govern the shearing industry. The shearers were being coerced into going back on their employers because they had “that damnable word ‘scab’ hurled at them by men who have never worked in the industry.” “The men who are directing this shearers’ executive are emt-and-out disloyalists outside the House, and they are backed up by disloyalists inside this House,” said Mr McLeod. “I am not using the term disloyalist in the narrow sense, 1 mean disloyalty to the laws of the country, the laws that represent the opinions of the majority of the people. The disloyalists work under the laws when it suits them, they work against the laws at other times, and in doing that they strike at the foundations of society.” The Labour extremists in New Zealand were in the habit of saying that the Government did not represent the people. But it was clear that the extremists were as disloyal to their own Governments in Australia as to the Reform Government. in New Zealand. Mr McLeod described the wrecking of Australian industries at Broken Hill, at Mount Morgan, and in the Queensland sugar districts by If he reckless activities of the extreme Labourites.