LABOUR DISPUTE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 137, 10 May 1940, Page 6

LABOUR DISPUTE.

MR ARMSTRONG’S VIEW. DISSIDENTS SHOULD RESIGN. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, May 9. The activities and recent utterances of Mr J. A. Lee and Hon. W. E. Barnard received a good deal of critical attention at a by-election meeting to-night addressed by the Minister of Health and Housing (Hon. H. T. Armstrong) and the official. Labour candidate for Auckland West (Mr P. Carr). “The Labour Party can only be defeated by internal dissension,” declared Mr Armstrong. “If people can’t pull any longer with the party, let them get out and carry on from outside, not behind the backs of their colleagues while they are inside.” The Minister went on to assert that Messrs Lee and Barnard had never been elected in then personal capacities, but only as pledged supporters of Labour. If lie were, in their present situation, he said, every known -principle of political decency would impel him to resign his scat and let the electors say whether they still wanted him. The two members knew-that if they did so they would not stand the ghost of a chance of being re-elected. Mr Armstrong emphatically denied Air - Lee’s reported statement that Cabinet had favoured a lower rate of old age pension than that now paid and that a group of members had persuaded the caucus to decide otherwise. Tho fact was, lie said, that the caucus had never taken a vote on the subject, but- had unanimously approved tlie present rate when it was brought forward by Cabinet. The Minister said the main trouble bad been that there was not room in the Cabinet for everybody, and everybody could not be Prime Minister.