BREAK WITH LABOUR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 August 1938, Page 9

BREAK WITH LABOUR

I SOCIAL CREDIT LEADER RESIGNS TAXATION & DEBT SYSTEM. PARTY UNDER THE CONTROL OF SMALL GROUP. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, August 29. A cleavage between the Labour Party and the monetary, reform advocates of New Zealand may follow the resignation from the party of Mr W.' B. Bray, recognised leader of the Douglas Social Credit Movement in New Zealand, and for long a prominent sup- ' porter of credit reform. Mr Bray has handed his resignation to the Woolston branch of the Labour Party, of which ( he has been a member, alleging , that he cannot subscribe to what he calls the “undemocratic” methods of Labour Party administrators. The failure of the Labour Party to make clear its intentions about its methods of finding money for State purposes is given by Mr Bray as his reason for resigning. In a statement he said that when he put forward his views by circular at the last Easter Labour conference, he had been severely reprimanded by the chairman, Mr James Roberts, who had advised' delegates to “tear the circular up.” “My reason for resigning is that the party has not carried out its election pledges and will not give the public a straight-out answer as to its intentions regarding the debt system of finding money for its purposes,” Mr Bray said. “The party promises to increase the buying power of the people. It has increased the incomes of sections at the expense of other sections of the people, and at the expense of all through a rise in prices. Its promises regarding the abolition of sales and exchange taxes are now found to have strings attached, and it is becoming clear, that in spite of all their protestations about the need for the reform of the monetary system, they are just as eager as any other Government to play the game for the credit monopolists, by acting as tax collectors. “They are obsessed with the idea that we need to be governed and that they are experts who know just what is good for us. Under the guise of Socialism they would divide us (by taxation) and rule, and in that respect they are no more and no less respectable than the governments being opposed by Labour in other so-called democratic countries. “I joined the Labour Party in an earnest endeavour to get them to see the folly of playing the game under the rules imposed by big finance, which is international and extra national. I had it put up to me that I had no business to stand off and criticise, but that if I had better ideas I had every right to go into the party and convince its members of the soundness of the alternative. My experience is that the party is controlled by a small group, the members of which, having a vested interest in their executive jobs, are more concerned with the fate of the party as 1 a party than with the interests of the whole of the people.”