Apologia Pro Vita Gambya

It is safe to assume that Labour will be much discredited when its present term in Parliament is over. There is a great difference between the ineffective, but decently obscured Opposition of last year and the crazily exposed Government of this. The next few years will see a lot of buck-passing and muddy abuse within the Party itself.

Holyoake has taken a high stand about bringing down the new Government (and he most easily could, considering the number of ailing men in the Labour Cabinet) on the grounds that it has a mandate to rule. The fact is they're only too happy to see a weak Labour Government threshing around. The best thing Holyoake can do for the Opposition is to judge exactly when the country has reached the very nadir of its fortunes—and find some pretext to force an election.

How is the Government placed to meet the problems facing it? All the men of long experience and tried handiness in office have suffered illness within the last year. The death of Mr. Nash would leave the Party with a pretty leadership problem on its hands, Mr. Moohan being out of favour just now. The sudden defection of Mr. Nordmeyer would foul up what is, in the circumstances, the most vital portfolio of all. Mr. Mason is the only man in the Parliamentary Labour Party with the proper qualifications for the Attorney-Generalship. In any case, all sorts of qualifications for high office seem to be lacking.

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Had the Parliamentary Party planned for itself, it would be a responsible Government today. You would expect a Labour Party to be nicely balanced between Left and Right, between union men and middle class men with qualifications other than contact with the rank and file; you would expect to find men with degrees for the Attorney-Generalship, the Portfolio of Education and the charge of the D.S.I.R.; you would expect Labour farmers and Labour businessmen. If a Nelson unionist can stand for Lyttelton, then a Hawkes Bay farmer can stand for Island Bay. The Party should be representative in Parliament and outside it.

Such a reappraisal will not now come without a struggle, and it must come from a well-organised and clear-sighted minority who are in agreement about the role Socialism has still to play in New Zealand and are not contented just to sit around making summaries of British Labour's "Blueprint for Prosperity".

The only way to make any impact at all is by direct political action—by putting up a candidate against every Official Labour candidate whose record does not justify his sitting in Parliament. We already know there is a body of discontented, leaderless voters, which will respond to directed effort. True leadership consists in capturing the imagination of a body of people, moving them to controlled endeavour, making a small epic struggle of their days and lives. Vote-splitting would ensure some members of the group of admission to Parliament sooner or later.

Any Labour Party whose affairs are conducted amid the crash of broken glass is in pretty good fettle. How long is it since New Zealand took a running jump at itself?

If there is to be any advance in Socialist thought in this country, it must be immediately concerned with the day to day working of governments; it must grow from a strong, articulate national alliance and it must aim at getting a hearing in the highest instrument of government; it must not go the way of the "Here and Now", the university, the uncommitted Socialist and Communist groups all over the country, which fume and pose and delude themselves that isolation and slander and bitterness will bring them nearer to making a responsible Parliamentary Party a reality.

Is there no room for socialism there? Then let us make room.

(To be continued.)