The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1929 PINK AND RED LABOUR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 806, 29 October 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1929 PINK AND RED LABOUR

A SERIES of vital issues confronts the British Government for ■ft the autumn session of Parliament which opens today in the House of Commons. But the main tests of the Government’s ability to keep in office are the complex problems affectingunemployment, the coal and cotton industries, Egypt, Russia, Iraq and India. All of these difficulties at home and abroad have been described with some picturesque exaggeration as mountainous waves which might combine in tremendous breakers to sweep the MacDonald Ministry off the bridge. Even a blind sage could foretell storms during this session of Great Britain’s virtually new Parliament, but can anyone with open-eyed vision really foresee an early wreck of the Labour ship ? Past events have not presaged quick disaster. Both in the summer session of five weeks and in the recess the Labour Government did so well that the warmest praise of its work came from its political enemies. A few months ago, the soothsayers of Fleet Street assured the world that the twin problems of Reparations and Rhineland would test the Labour Administration to the breaking-point. Mr. Snowden went to The Hague, bowled straight in the Yorkshire manner, and gained a triumph which made all political parties at Home hoarse from cheering. And British troops promptly departed from the Rhineland, leaving the German populace pale and sad with the emotions of regret! Since those victorious days for Labour, the question of Anglo-American relations over the Naval Disarmament programme has been composed and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald has won a sentimental victory in the United States.

So, in every way, the immediate past has given the second MacDonald Government a creditable record. But politicians cannot live on the past alone. They must prove themselves able to thrive on the present and to prepare for the future or sink beneath those “mountainous waves” in the murky sea of party politics. Thus, there is no dearth of prediction as to the storms which await Labour in the House of Commons. It has been reported from London that the rising tide of unemployment will be the worst danger. Also there are prophecies of a wrecking challenge from the Conservatives and the Liberals in turn, if not from both together.

The Baldwin Government, with ample opportunity and talent at its disposal, tried to solve the problem of unemployment throughout a difficult lustrum, and failed. It was dismissed by the national electorate because the majority of the people believed that the Conservatives had, in effect, “fatalistically accepted the disease as incurable by human agency.” The Liberals, before the General Election, guaranteed to exorcise the evil spirit of unemployment by the simple process of waving a magic wand. Unlike the people of this country, who plumped for the United Party’s promised enchantment, the voters in Great Britain merely laughed at the Liberals’ wizardry, but would not accept it as a form of Government policy. Curiously enough, when the Labour Party was returned to power, its Ministers were the first to refrain from promising a complete solution of the unemployment problem. It refused to take Bernard Shaw’s advice about the necessity of dressing political windows with a lavish display of gaudy stuff, and thus succeeded in saving its front windows from being smashed. Mr. MacDonald and his colleagues apparently believe that the disease of unemployment calls for slow and prolonged treatment. And therein lie the Government’s most serious difficulties and danger. The Ministry has devised a pink Labour programme, and refuses to dye it a vivid red. Its own Left Wing is known as the Ginger Group, whose policy is anything but pink, being more the hue of piratical adventure. Still, as a Labour journal in London has observed, this fact does not necessarily mean that the Red rebels will attempt, or even will have the desire, to destroy the Government. “Ginger groups, after all, equip themselves with ginger and not with gunpowder. And a little ginger, given and taken (or refused) in the right spirit should not do the Government any harm.” In any case, it looks as though Mr. Snowden, as keeper of the nation’s purse, may have to remember Kipling’s “If” when confronted with the demands of the Ginger Group for a sensational cure of unemployment. A TRAGEDY OF AIR AND SEA IMPERIAL AIRWAYS, the great British air service which maintains services with express-train precision across Europe, the Mediterranean and the desert wastes of Asia, has had its second serious accident within a few months. A record which until June last was unapproachable in the history of commei'cial flying has now been blemished by disasters involving in all tlie loss of fifteen lives. The forced descent of the City of Ottawa in the English Channel last June cost the lives of eight of the thirteen persons aboard, and now another machine has foundered off the Italian coast with the loss of her company of seven, including passengers and crew. There are aspects of the latest disaster which make the circumstances extremely sad, and until fuller information is given there will perhaps be some mystery as to why the Italian tug did not take the passengers off, or pick them up by even the most desperate expedients from the sea, rather than leave them unattended at its mercy.

Tragedies of the air are not confined to services operated under British direction. A Continental service suffered a similar setback a few months ago, and in America a trans-continental plane crashed into the slope of a mountain in New Mexico, where all trace of the machine was lost for some days until one of a fleet of searching planes found the burned and crumpled wreckage and the charred bodies of its passengers and crew. The assumption is that safety in the air cannot yet be guaranteed. But the air services of the world have now carried such immense numbers of passengers with comparative immunity from accident that prospective travellers should no more be influenced by recent accidents than before the days of air services they were dissuaded from travelling by train on account of a railway accident, or by steamer on account of a shipwreck or collision at sea. The truth is that even the most elaborate devices cannot assure complete personal safety in any circumstances, and the risk these days seems to be as great on the ground as in the air. Nevertheless, there may be lessons to be learned from each accident. The City of Ottawa was only a twin-engined plane, and it was recommended subsequently none but three-engined expresses be used. In the case of the lost flying-boat, the City of Rome, it is apparent that there was not sufficient buoyancy or strength to allow the craft to survive rough seas. Whether for air-liners which may at any time have to descend into rough water, a better design and stronger materials may be devised, is a problem for the designers. As the capacity of the flying-boats grows, it is a problem that must be faced. One of the latest machines, for instance, has a carrying capacity of 100 passengers. Oil the tranquil waters of a lake such a craft can land in complete safety, but in the open sea she would probably offer no more resistance to the waves than the ill-fated Citv of Rome.