CHARGE REPEATED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 May 1938, Page 8

CHARGE REPEATED

IN FACE OF ABSOLUTE DENIAL. ' MAYOR OF DUNEDIN & BANKS By Telegraph—Press Association. DUNEDIN, This Day. Following on his statement about the banks threatening to deny accommodation to members of the Labour Party and the bank managers’ absolute denial, the Mayor (the Rev. E. T. Cox) said: “While I accept the statement of the managers as far as the majority is concerned, it does not do away with the fact that customers have reported to me this week along the lines that I outlined. I am having affidavits signed to send to the Prime Minister. To deal with banks 'is the business of governments. I merely point out an abuse. The banks' attitude is not new. At the last general election they paid for splash advertisements in the metropolitan newspapers, urging people to keep Labour out. Thus they used their shareholders’ money for illegitimate purposes. Unless they mend their ways, the days of private banks in this Dominion are numbered.”

In the course of an election address Mr Cox, who is again contesting the Dunedin mayoralty, stated that people known to be associated with the Labour Party had been called into their offices by the managers of certain banks and informed that it would not pay them to be members of that party and that instructions had been received from headquarters that accommodation would no longer be available for members of that party. Managers of the six trading banks in a signed statement gave an emphatic denial to all these statements, adding: “No action on tne lines indicated has been taken by any of the banks nor have any such instructions been’ received from the head offices.”