Owen Gager's article, criticising Labour policy, published in last week's Salient has brought replies from party members stating their views.

Sir—Mr Gager's utter arrogance could only be excused if he were also ignorant.

Although he may feel superior enough to call others ignorant, some might prefer to describe Gager with a sentence of his own— "There's nobody that loves you like yourself, as they say." Or possibly "men who seek individual power with the minimum of scruple."

Let us have a look at Gager's background.

On looking at my records I was surprised to see that Gager is not only a member of the VUW Labour Club but also an executive member. At our last meeting he was too busy to attend till the very end because he was involved in the "more important" business of student power.

No doubt he either dismisses this as nonradical (why then was he so busy?) or he has conveniently forgotten that it was the Labour Club that first raised the whole issue of student power.

But then he may well reply that he should not be judged by his friends but by his actions.

He accuses the universities of "a desire to win over the unions" but says that "trade union radicalism finds no echo in the university branches."

Without any evidence he then alleges that, in fact, the universities are attempting to use the unions.

Is all this not a little strange from one so enmeshed in university affairs as the ever popular "Owie Baby"? Why doesn't Gager make his union his main sphere of activity?

But perhaps they won't let him use them. Or is it not an accident that his Trotskyist affiliation was limited to the daytime only.

Perhaps Gager would not like to be judged by his actions?

As for Gager's accusation of "alliance with the worst elements in the Labour Party", I am sure that he must favour the exclusive participation of university students in the ivory tower branches and, heaven forbid, that they should be active among the masses.

If he wishes to call my representation of the Seamen's Union at conference a "rotten borough" then he is clearly against the close co-operation of universities and unions.

As for his information that I am doing research for them on the subject of a National Shipping Line—just what does Gager want from the universities or the Labour Party?

If he cares to put his effort to documentary constructive ideas, they will be welcome. But his negative and confounded criticism is strange from one who was only two months ago, sufficiently satisfied that the party was worth representing as Gager was happy to put his name forward for the Wellington City Council on a Labour ticket.

We are prepared to be judged by our actions and so should Gager.

In summary let me say that I am sure that many people would now like some facts on what the universities did put forward and say at the Labour Party Conference.

Then Gager can be judged by his friends, actions and ommissions of facts.

Finally, if Gager is so concerned with the lack of radical ideas in the Labour Party why didn't he produce a single issue of Labour Club magazine when appointed editor?

He cannot even claim that the party has tried to silence him.

For those (unlike Gager) who like to base their opinions on some facts I have been invited by the editor of Salient to submit a full review of the Labour Party Conference and the universities' role at it.

Mr Gager replies:

It would seem that something about my article on the Labour Party conference has upset Mr. Hirshfield.

But, as he is unable to claim that anything in my article is untrue, unfounded or incorrect, one is left wondering what exactly he objects to.

At no point in my article did I attack Hirshfield personally, so it is difficult to see why he feels it necessary to spend the bulk of his letter on personal abuse of myself.

No doubt Hirshfield has to attack me to satisfy the Labour Party's head office that he is doing his job, and personal abuse is the only kind of polemics be is capable of rising (or sinking) to.

I will not reply in kind. I will merely ask why Hirshfield bothers to write letters attacking me when he has a far better method of lining me up on his agenda—a censure motion at the next Labour Club executive meeting.

Anybody who may be contemplating joining the Labour Party should be warned that Hirshfield's actions exemplify his party's attitude to criticism—first, personal abuse and second, the witchhunt.

But, as we have noted, Hirshfield personally cannot really be blamed for all this—he knows very well he might be a target of Big Norm's bloodlust if he did not write as be did.

Wrong Side

Sir—Mr Gager on the Labour Party Conference makes me believe he is now so far to the left he is in cloud-cuckoo land on the right.

Gager has made himself the doyen of right wing political circles. He has cohabited quite happily with such denizens of the University Campus as P. J. Wedderspoon.

He graces the living room of far right wing Councillor McGrath, delighting the assembled advocates of the market economy with his criticisms of the Labour movement.

He comes back from National Club Little Congress virtually aglow with pleasure that Uncle Tom Shand had placed his big ex-workers' mit on his shoulder, in a gesture of acceptance of Owen Gager, independent critic.

Gager and Mr Logan are two excellent examples of the operation of psychopathoiogy in politics. Both believe that it is impossible for the socialist movement in this country to make any progress without it being a reaction in disguise.

That is why Gager chooses to believe the reason branches choose to be represented by students at the Labour Party Conference is they are too apathetic, rather than that they really want to be represented by articulate young people with forward-looking ideas.

If Gager had actually been at the conference and not outside the doors of the Town Hall picking up snippets of gossip, which the peculiar workings of his mind further distorted, he might have realised that branches represented by their own members, university delegates and progressive elements of the trade union movement for the first time, were able to command a majority of this conference.

The universities were playing a very significant role in shaping the policy of a major political party.

Of course, it served Logan's interest as a member of the National Party to have Gager launch a child-like attack on the leadership of the Labour Party and deliberately ignore the very significant issues raised by this Conference.

It now seems to be the policy of the Student Executive to appoint members of the National Party to editorship of Salient—Mr Rennie, Mr Saunders, the two immediate past editors— belong to that unholy alliance of trade and peasant.

Owen Gager is Publications' Officer on the Student Executive—funny appointment, Logan's for a "socialist?"

Gager is wedded to the politics of personalities and it is his own ego that always peeps life a half risen sun, through his writing.

Could the reason for Gager's attack on Professor Chapman be that Gager was never accepted by the Auckland academic establishment?

It was, of course, Gager who spoke against supporting a trade unionist and watersider for Eastern Maori by-election—peculiar middleclass view, that, for one who accuses Labour's youth movement of trying to perpetuate a class system.

Gager is everything that the National Party member likes to imagine a "socialist" is— a professional student who bites those in a movement with him, harder than those who prevent the achievement of ends he professes to believe.

Unlike Gager, I believe the ideals and policies of the Labour movement are far more important than its personalities.

However, I deny that I have ever claimed to be a Trotskyism but take pleasure in reaffirming my belief in anarchism.

My ideal is a society in which all forms of authoritarian control no longer exist and anarchism offers progressive alternative policies in industrial organisation and education.

Labour will begin a movement towards this type of society when it passes a remit to abolish the Security Police at its next conference.

It began this movement by implementing a policy of Trust Control at its 1968 Conference.

Murray Rowlands.

Mr Gager replies:

Like Mr Hirshfield, Murray Rowlands, the Labour Party's only anarchist, does not anywhere in his article attack any fact, sentence, idea or even piece of punctuation in my article.

He just attacks me personally. No doubt this is very satisfying as a vent for Rowlands's frustrations.

But it is no answer to anything I said. It merely shows that the truth hurts.

Does Rowlands's recent election to the Wellington LRC and his possible candidature for Wellington Central account for his ur-anarchist concern for Order, Discipline and Orthodoxy in the Labour Party?

Surely, one can hear him thinking, it is worthwhile attacking the freedom to criticise if being a good bully-boy for Kirk can make him the world's first anarchist MP.

Rowlands does not like me because I attack Labour's leadership, I dislike the Auckland academic establishment, and I believe in political impartiality in making appointments as Publications' Officer.

One can take it, conversely, that Rowlands supports the Labour leadership, (which opposed the university branches at conference), the Auckland academic establishment and political partiality—as well, of course, as being an anarchist.

Apart from stating his principles, or absence of them, on these points, Rowlands is merely inaccurate.

I have never criticised the Labour movement (why is Rowlands afraid of that word 'party'?) in McGrath's living room.

I have never shared a flat with P. J. Wedders-spoon. Mr. Shand has never put his hand on my shoulder. I was actually inside the Town Hall during the Labour Party Conference.

I did not oppose Labour's selection for Eastern Maori.

I do not expect Rowlands to apologise for his inaccuracies.

It is only too evident he prefers, like any would-be Labour candidate, fiction to fact.

Stop Progress

Sir—Mr Gager is entitled to his opinions, but he might have a little more regard for reality when he expresses them.

A political writer in a university paper is free to be lopsided in his judgment. A politcal editor, as Gager is billed, should pay more heed to balance.

He, as one member of the Labour Party, is free to be as divergent from the norm as he chooses.

Might I say as a person who chose willingly to join Labour in recent times, that I did so with the belief that I could throw my lot in with my contemporaries who were endeavouring to contribute to a stronger, better equipped Labout Party, consequently a valuable opposition and alternative Government.

It is from this point of view that I find Gager's gratuitous insults superufluous, to use an understatement.

I was sorry I missed the Labour Party Conference ( I returned from the Cook Islands for its tail end) but I gained the impression that the changes which occurred at conference show Labour is being changed by its youth, closer assessment of policy making procedures and a greater potential to fill the policy vacuum Mr Blizard alleges of Labour, and with which Gager claims a preoccupation.

In the effluent poured out by Gager, I find more than one insinuation which disturbs my sense of accuracy.

"But the universities have run out of radical ideas after their radical splurge this conference and it will take them some time to think of some more."

Not everyone shares Gager's somewhat hazy perception of radicalism.

Not everyone wishes to divert their energies from policy making to coping with the superuflous factionalism implicit in Gager's view of Labour.

And as for the policy making—the prospect of assisting with it has drawn me to Labour.

As Political Editor of Salient in 1964, I was urging greater attention to policy formation by the Labour Club.

In 1968 I feel the opportunities to participate in policy formation for the universities are greater than ever before, and I detect signs that they are willing to respond to the challenge.

Outbursts like Gager's, impede our chances to do so.

Anthony Haas.

Mr Gager replies:

In all the alleged "replies" to my article, there has been a considerable vagueness about what it was I said which has been found so objectionable.

Mr Haas comes nearest to labelling what this is, though, alas, his is by no means a reasonable or balanced coming to terms with the issues raised in my article.

One must be grateful, however, that he at least does me the courtesy, rare it seems in Labour Party circles, of scanting personal abuse.

I would be ready to accept that what I wrote constituted "insults" to the party if Haas were prepared to specify statements which were insults, and say why he thought they were, such.

Haas's emotion is evidently too great to permit him this exercise in logic.

His only real argument against the views I expressed is to say that at the present time he believes university opportunities to participate in policy-making are greater than previously.

What my article contended was that university successes at Labour's conference were more illusory than real, and that the leadership could, and would, obstruct any genuine breakthrough into radicalism, like opposition to SEATO.

This view can only be strengthened by a recognition of the autonomy of Labour's Policy Committee.

These are views argued out in my article.

If they are dubious, at least I have a right to ask that they be countered by argument, not bare assertion.