The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1929 MR. WIFFEN COMES HOME

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 556, 8 January 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1929 MR. WIFFEN COMES HOME

IN a grey old world it would be saddening, indeed, to lose tlie * brightening influence of sueh an institution as the N.Z. Communist Party, which held its first annual conference at Wellington last week. As a demonstration of the sincerity of Communist purposes, the epochal gathering was conducted during the holidays. While others were enjoying rational recreation, this handful of astigmatic visionaries was pondering upon the many wrongs of the lower orders. Like the irreligious iconoclasts of Russia, the N.Z. -Communist Party presumably does not recognise the existence of Christmas holidays or the Christmas spirit.

With suffering, want, unemployment and poverty evident even in the most perfectly ordered social systems yet devised in this lamentably imperfect world, it is very easy to adopt revolutionary resolutions. The Communists agreed that there should be a basic wage of £5 10s on a 40-hour week; work on full maintenance rates for unemployed; abolition of the Arbitration Court, coupled with recognition of the right to strike; and a State housing scheme, providing houses for a rental of one day’s pay a week. There being a flavour of reform about three of the four resolutions noted, it is easy for the Communists to proclaim a tender concern for oppressed humanity. At the same time, they might do much better—without being any more impractical—with something like this: Motor-cars, gramophones and radio-sets provided for all workers, free of cost; holidays for three months in the year, with free trips to Russia every five years; the working week to be confined to Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings.

The Labour Party came under the Communist group’s lash. It called upon Labour to cease its sinful co-operation with the employers, and to refrain from supporting the League of Nations. At the same time, it demands complete disarmament, forgetting that, while this measure might achieve a sort of compulsory truce among the nations, it would be accompanied by an outburst of incredibly fierce class warfare following on the recognition of the right to strike. On an international scale, this would culminate in the sort of gory orgy Communists and their ilk so fondly contemplate. The orgy would embrace all races—black, white and brown. The New Zealand adherent of Communism would find himself fighting side by side with Capetown coolies and the scum of the Cairo slums. Weight of numbers would win the battle for the revolutionaries. The bottom dog would be sitting on top of the world. What he would do then, and how he would adjust his colossal internal problems, is the sort of thing the Communist Conference does not deal with.

From these grim but improbable possibilities it is refreshing to turn to the lighter side of Communism, as personified by Mr. R. Wiffen. Mr. Wiffen, apparently an engaging sort of showman, was “one of the attractions” at the conference. He had just returned from a three months’ visit to Soviet Russia, aud “though handicapped by his lack of the language,” returned “amply supplied with Communist ammunition.” Whether Mr. Wiffen’s views on Soviet Russia coincide with those of resident judicial observers fully versed in the language, and therefore a trifle more competent to judge, is not disclosed; hut, possibly, in some ingenious fashion of his own, he was able to explain away the many evils that have followed nationalisation in Russia, the campaign of hate that is conducted in the soulless republic, and the great military preparations that make Russia most feared, of all their neighbours, by the nations of Central Europe. His “lack of the language” would doubtless help the ingenious Mr. Wiffen over these hurdles. Having absorbed the calm judgments of their accomplished emissary, the conference—the whole eight or ten of it—no doubt rose and sang “God Save the King” with the greater heartiness and fervour.