GROUPS AND PARTIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 September 1943, Page 3

GROUPS AND PARTIES

INDEPENDENCE IN POLITICS. OBSERVATIONS BY CAPTAIN POWER. When addressing a meeting in Masterton recently Mrs J. A. Lee, organiser of the Democratic Soldier Labour Party, was asked, in reference to the Independent Group, “what is the difference between a group and a party.” A voice replied: “There is no difference.’ Mrs Lee added that if a number of Independents were returned there would be bedlam when it came to divisions in the House.

Captain Justin Power, Independent candidate for Masterton, when addressing the electors at Eketahuna, stated in reply that it was pathetic that Mrs Lee had not taken the trouble- to make herself conversant with the aims and objects of the opposing sides in this election. The position was, stated Captain Power, that the Independent Group candidates were not in any way opposed to parties or groups of members in the House of Parliament so long as the individual was free to debate and vote on any measure in accordance with his or her own conscience. It was the political party machinery outside the House which controlled the members of the parties under the existing political system, which the Independent Group members were pledged to destroy. Parties and groups in politics were inescapable. Captain Power further stated that it was .difficult to understand Mrs Lee’s reasoning that bedlam would arise when divisions were called. There were Independents in the House now, including Mrs Lee’s husband, yet nothing untoward happened when the division bells rang. Captain Power asked Mrs Lee by whose authority or what colour of right was the word soldier included in the nomenclature of her husband’s party? It was believed that it had been added, said Captain Power, against the expressed objection of the New Zealand Returned Servicemen’s Association.