NELSON DEMANDS JUSTICE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 16 January 1931, Page 7

NELSON DEMANDS JUSTICE

(To the Editor) ; Sir, —The vigorous attitude and action of the Nelson Progress League, must have gladdened the hearts of all the people between Port Nelson and the Inangahua Junction, who have the welfare of the city and province at heart, and whatever may be the outcome of its efforts to secure the continuance of Construction on the gap in the Midland railway, the League will deserve the “well done,” and profound appreciation of the people. It has often met with a measure of criticism, well meant, and constructive, in efforts to rouse the League to its present high pitch of enthusiastic action on behalf of the completion of the railway that is destined to provide an outlet for this city and province to all other parts of the South Island.

- The present fast-rising wave of indignation. against the precipitate and unwarranted action of the Acting-Prime Minister, must remind the old residents of the indignation of the people in the seventies, and eighties, of last century against the action of the then governments, in interfering with the schemes then in hand for linking up Nelson with the West and East coasts, either qf which would have been quickly and assuredly brought to fruition but fo’ the governments of those times, and ; now these black bits of history are being repeated, under still more callous and unwarranted -(conditions, because of this Government and Parliament having definitely, promised and sanctioned its completion, and having been elected mainly on its proclaimed vigorous railway policy, which neither Mr Ransom nor his North Island colleagues, nor political friends have any right or mandate to annul, and set at nought without the sanction of the United Party and Parliament. In this connection the nows in tonight’s “Mail” of Mr Black, the member for Motueka (including the whole area of the gap) requesting a caucus of the United Party to consider the present glaring breaches of the party’s railway policy, cannot but give joy and satisfaction all over his constituency, and throughout the province, and it must be fervently hoped that he will thus secure the verdict of the party, in re-affirming tho party’s railway policy, or their volte face, and concurrence with Mr Ransom’s invidious political partiality, in selecting lines with the least political influence behind them for stoppage of construction, and sanctioning the more costly and least urgent railways construction to proceed, for most obvious political reasons. Nelson would no doubt have liked to see its own parliamentary representative openly backing up the efforts of Mr Black, to secure justice for the province instead of the silence and non-co-operation we have to submit to as the price of political loyalty to an acting Prime Minister and Cabinet who we understand imposed this disastrous injustice on Nelson when the Hon. Mr Atmore was absent. . There can be no manner of doubt that so far as Murchison is concerned the stoppage of the Midland line construction if allowed to become permanent will spell ruin to the township and district in so far as stopping further development, and beir- bled white by other interests that may only await the news of construction being abandoned in order to increase the present fares and freights. It is confidently declared that the stopnage of railway construction will prove' a greater disaster to Murchison than the great earthquake of 1929,

for it has quickly recovered from that upheaval, and with the definite promises and assurances of the railway completion it had begun to boom and go ahead, a condition of things that will be killed if the railway construction is allowed to be abandoned, and a wholesale migration will set in from there, as it did in Nelson under similar conditions nearly 50 years ago, which checked development to a disastrous extent, and caused hundreds to migrate to other parts. We must hope there will be such a response to the appeal of the Nelson Progress League for representatives of every local body, and every typo of organisation, and business firms, throughout the province either as appointed or volunteers, as will make this deputation double or treble the size in numbers and influence of any deputation that has ever gone from this province to Wellington, and so impress Prime Minister Forbes and his reactionary colleagues by its numbers, its representative character of every interested section of the province, and above all the strength of its case for the railway’s speedy completion as will convince the Ministers and Cabinet that its unwise and unjust decision regarding the Midland line must be revoked and the construction and completion of this gap-filling be continued with all possible speed, as a sound economic and national work of the primest importance, and so give to this Cinderella province a long overdue justice and Nelson must refuso to take “no” for an answer and demand A SQUARE DEAL. Nelson, 14th January.