Editorial

June 5, 1968

Opinions expressed in Salient are not necessarily those of VUWSA.

It is in the university branches that the problem of dissent within political parties occurs most often and with most urgency. This is a problem which has beset at various times both the National Club and the Labour Club at Vic. It is a problem that, when it occurs, it usually splits a club very seriously and can have permanent effects on its membership. But one hopes that it is a problem which will have to be faced by all the party political clubs again in the future, and frequently.

A political party is nothing more than a piece of machinery through which individual people can speak and work in the ways they think are in the best interests of the community. It is inherent in this that the interests of the community—as seen by any individual—take priority over the interests of the party.

The conflict is inevitable because the interests of a political party are so vast that is is inconceivable that they can avoid having points of conflict with the moral values, beliefs and opinions of all individual members.

The right to be politically effective depends on the right to be active in a politically effective party. This right is absolutely necessary to any Parliamentary Democracy that is not a sham.

It is so difficult for an individual who has a disagreement with every party to start an effective one of his own that for this right to exist at all it is necessary for all effective parties to accommodate even people who have strong disagreements with them. The parties must expect not only that the disagreeing members will express their opposition within the party, but that they will confront the party with this opposition publicly, and attempt to discredit those policies they disagree with from the outside.

Unless there is another effective party which would more adequately contain the views of the individuals concerned—something judgable only by those individuals — they must be allowed to remain within their respective parties despite dissent in particulars.

It is not stating the case too strongly to say that a party which does not allow active and vigorous dissent is undemocratic to an extent which is totally intolerable. A party officer who does not approve of such dissent, or at least permit it, deserves not merely relegation to the lowest rank and reputation in his party, but to public derision such as is now at least limited by the laws of defamation.