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Youth Is The Answer

Labour's Policy Under Fire

At the 1968 Labour Party Conference, the Youth and University Branches played a significant role in shaping the policy of the Party. As the Labour Party is the party of change, the role of its articulate younger members is correspondingly important. The task of applying the concepts of democratic socialism to problems being faced by the country's economy, to a disintegrating system of social welfare, to the vexed question of civil liberties, were all questions which were discussed at a Conference of Youth and University Branches held in the weekend before Conference began.

Most delegates at this meeting were as critical as Mr. Gager of the Labour Party's policy-making procedures but they offered constructive ideas about how procedures for policy making could be updated. Delegates heard an excellent series of papers on the economy (Dennise Rose. Institute of Economic Research), Social Security (Mrs. R. Noonan, Lecturer in History, Auckland University) and Trade Union Organisation (Brian Seddon, Rubber Workers' Union). These speakers expressed discontent at the way the Party's policy on economic planning on extending the scope and provisions of the welfare state and the confrontation with the need of reskilling those in declining industries, were progressing. The desire for a revolution in the thinking and administration of the Labour Party were obvious in the statement produced at the end of the Youth and Universities' Meeting. The preliminary meeting provided these groups within the party with a cohesion they had formerly not possessed and they were therefore in a better position to press forward the many remits they had put before the Conference.

Although elements of the trade union movement with branches and Youth and University groups were able to win a card vote on the question of television policy against the "top table", the feeling that real decisions were- often being made elsewhere will pervade Conference. Because this Conference lay between an important constitutional Conference (when the Youth and Universities had been decisively defeated in their attempts at constitutional change), and the policy conference of election year, the party hierarchy had expected this to be a "low key" conference. However, the growing demand for effective leadership and strong opposition policy from political labour, revealed itself at this Conference and showed clearly that National Office and the National executive of the Party had misread the mood of the Labour movement. The best elements of the trade union movement, come to the Labour Party Conference looking for new ideas on how political labour was going to confront such problems as unemployment.

This demand that party leadership be in ideas and policies, was the reason for the hearing that university speakers got from trade union delegates. In a small way, an alliance between the unions and students seeking a drastic change in the policies of government of this country occurred at the Conference. Delegates from the universities supported the trade unions on issues such as the more frequent meeting of the Joint Council of Labour (F.O.L.—Labour Party). The union delegates in return, helped overturn many of the recommendations of the Justice and Licencing Committee. The Chairman of this Committee is Mr. J. H. Collins, a union secretary, one of whose unions is the Brewery Workers' Union. Mr. Collins has been chairman of this committee for some number of years and usually delegates have been prepared to accept the recommendations of his committee.

The reaction of delegates to Mr. Collins' report this year, set the mood for the Conference. For instance Mr. Collins claimed that there were enough safeguards for those demonstrating, on the statute books already, when Conference came to consider remits protecting the right of peaceful demonstration. The inadequacy of this claim was quickly exposed by Dr. Ruth Butterworth and an amending motion against the recommendation of Mr. Collins' committee was easily carried on the voices. A remit calling for the abolition of bugging devices and one deploring the activity of the security police in the trade unions and universities, was almost turned into a motion to abolish the security service. Roger Boshier, made an excellent speech outlining the incident in which a National Party official sought and obtained information from the Security Service on himself. However, the chairman ruled that Conference had rejected a motion to abolish the service the previous year and so, following Conference procedure it would be invalid to reintroduce the same motion.

On the question of licencing, the Conference demanded that the party explicitly move towards measures which would facilitate the creation of trust control throughout the country. Following Conference, the New Zealand Alliance issued a statement that their organisation would support changing the licencing ballot to a straight choice between private enterprise and trust control. Further, Conference was concerned that in some areas where trust control had won overwhelming acceptance, finance was not available to establish a Trust. Conference was concerned that the state should make finance available for this purpose.

As I said earlier, a large proportion of the remits considered by this Conference were from Youth and University Branches. In the Foreign Affairs debate on the Wednesday. University speakers persuaded Conference that membership to SEATO would not be compatible with the aims and objectives a Labour Government would seek to pursue. Remits calling for opposition to SEATO have regularly appeared on the remit paper of Conference over recent years but invariably have been rejected. I believe the P.P.P. Conference and Conor Cruise O'Brien's destruction of the myth of SEATO created the mood for the acceptance of this resolution. A speech from Dr. Bassett which supported a motion to curtail the military role of New Zealand troops in Asia, drew the opposition of Mr. Kirk. He stated that such a policy would prevent New Zealand from giving military aid to Social Democratic states in Asia such as Singapore. Though the level of debate on foreign affairs was the highest of any Conference I have attended (including the 1965 Conference when the policy on Vietnam was announced) after two hours of debate, one feels that the atmosphere of Conference changes to mild hostility towards foreign affairs, and there is a general desire to move onto more bread and butter topics. This impatience was responsible for the failure of some excellent remits on the Pacific Area from the Dunedin Central Youth Branch, to pass through Conference.

The Secretary of the Victoria Branch, spoke frequently on the need to reorganise the whole policy-making structure of; the party. In connection with this the. breakdown in communication between policy makers and Conference became very obvious over the heated debate created by the recommittal of an earlier motion on Broadcasting. If Mr Kirk had called for "economic planning", delegates wanted to know) what Labour's policy would be on how precisely it would operate?

Mr. Kirk's speech showed Labour's policy in 1969, would be an amalgam of old measures and new concepts. The Youth and Universities Branches are in agreement with the points he made during an excellent address. However they are asking the question of whether or not the thinking has been done to turn vigorous praise-worthy statements into effective policy. Whatever the extent of their present effect on party policy unlike the National Party the lounge-suited pragmatist is not king in the Labour Party.

Murray Rowlands.