WHERE THE LABOUR PARTIES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2705, 8 March 1924, Page 4

WHERE THE LABOUR PARTIES

THE SAME OLD ROAD. (Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare League). “Scratch a Socialist and you find a Tory” is a remark attributed to Mr Tillett, M.P. There is much truth in it. To commence with the Socialist is a dogmatist and like dogmatists in general be scouts all ideas that do not square will his fixed creed. It the facts conflict with the hypothesis lie names socialism, so much the worse for the facts. Such is the hard-shell conservative attitude of the Socialist. The British Labour Party glories in being idealist. Its leader, Mr Ramsay McDonald, says they are “building away on the horizon” of course it is impertinent to ask where the foundations are laid, whether these also are on the horizon. Now it is right to carry high ideals as a light on our path but when the ideal is taken as the road itself we are apt to find that treading the moonbeams is a rather unsafe footing. Our experience of Labour Socialist parties in the British Dominions is that the road they have always taken leads to more and more indebtedness. Each one of them in succession, where they have been trusted with office, have started out to give away what the State did not have and been forced to borrow more abundantly to go on with. This has occurred in Australia to such an extent as to turn the electors sick and lead to Labour’s ejectment. Notwithstanding the failures whenever a Labour Socialist party gets into power it goes on ,tlie same old road of debauch. The inability of these Red parties to' mark out any new course stamps them as inherently Tory, after their own fashion.

From the British news to date it is evident that the party led by Mr McDonald is bent on following the same track as the other socialist. parties have taken. It has started out until great promises to the masses of housing, pensions, high wages and other social benefits which wijl involve enortnous expenditure. That is the socialist line to first plunge into the policy of giving and later on consider where the moans is to be found. Mr Stanley Baldwin is only a plain business man —some say “not a politician” which, after all, may be to his credit —he looked at the means first, found his country heavily burdened with debt and her trade going. Mr. Ramsay McDonald says his party “inherits a state of bankruptcy” yet ignores the presumption that tins may be due in some measure to her established fiscal policy which his party conservatively upholds. We say advisedly “conservative” for the Labour Government is opposing any Commission of Inquiry into the state of Empire Trade.presumably on the ground that its findings might embarrass them In following the line of encouraging international business even if, in some directions, Empire Trade must suffer. The doctrine of full sympathy with Germany and Russia has been such a large part of the. British Socialist programme that the party seems disposed to overlook the fact that the products of these countries may seriously undersell those of Great Britain and her overseas Dominions. This is the result of having a closed mind to the fact that in considering international relations the factors of competition and conflict have to be regarded quite as fully as the emotion of sympathy.-The idea that the socialists possess special inventive genius and will mark newer and better roads'ln political government is quite an illusion. It is the old pathway they tread which opportunist politicians love to wander. Promise the people a millennium; give them, all you can to purchase support and, finally, leave tilings In he cleared up by posterity, or somebody who only believes in hard work and economy and have not their eyes fixed on the stars. This is the course followed by all socialist parties up till now and all the indications arc that the Socialist Labour Party of to-day are like their predecessors and will travel the same highway. The true progressive is not he who dreams of the future or looks backwards to the past, but one who views things as they really are now and works to give them practical effect for good. We want neither reaction or revolution but steady progress on constructive lines.