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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 18. July 30, 1968

Out Side Left

page 16

Out Side Left

If You're a pressure group and want to have a man in Parliament, what do you do? You lose a referendum with an overwhelming vote against you, and then one or other of the parties will ask your national secretary to stand for a safe seat -no doubt as a consolation.

* * *

Some Of these so-called 'liberals' in Vic's National Party Club should surely be worried by the Party's new objectives adopted at last week's national National conference (you remember, the weekend the Salient editor was away?) The Party's new objectives commit Tories to oppose subversion from within and other far out right-wing stuff-you wouldn't Think all Tory progressives could go along with it. We'll wait with interest for the report on conference at the next National Party's meeting-"They Caled Me Kiwi" or "I was Tom Shand Yesterday, But, Boy, You- Ought To See Me Now".

* * *

National Party Club seems so moribund at the moment that even the left-wing clubs oppose that thing they call Communism over there in Eastern Europe more actively than the Tories. Its an open secret that Spartacist Club beat everybody to the draw in protesting against Soviet actions in Czechoslovakia, with National Party jumping on the bandwagon very late, and then only sending two of its members along to the vigil. (And one of them had joined National Club because it was more left-wing than Labour). Labour Club honoured Sir Walter Nash's death and the traditions of the Labour Party by being neither for nor against either the Russians or the Czechs.

* * *

Now That Pooh Club, in a long overdue move, is taking over Exec it seems that Exec, which has always been very well qualified to take over Pooh Club, will organise the honey-eating at Vic from now on. This circulation of elites, as Pareto would have celled it, can only be beneficial: Pooh Club has always, without meaning to, showed more common sense than Exec, while Exec again without meaning to, has always been more zany than Pooh Club.

* * *

Its Looking unlikely that there'll be more than about three people in the 1968 Exec who've been on a previous Exec. This is another example of the circulation of elites, I suppose, but it does mean simply that nobody will know what has been done before-except that repository of tradition Miss Clarkson who often seems to run the Association if only because she is the only person who knows what precedent was set three years ago. If the Public Service runs the Cabinet, since Ministers come and Ministers go but the Public Service goes on forever, how much more is Exec run by its employees with the average Exec member serving only one term?