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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 9. 1st May 1974

Labour betrays old friends

page 5

Labour betrays old friends

Drawing of two men

Fred McComish is the President of the Pensioners and Beneficiaries Association and on the Friday night before last he trudged up the hill to Victoria to speak at "Socialist Forum", a bi-weekly gathering attended mainly by people of Trotskyite affiliation. I can't say why the 'Young Socialists' support for progressive groups doesn't extend as far as providing transport for pensioners, but then Mr McComish became quite accustomed to walking in his days as President of the Unemployed Workers Union.

In the depression years before the first Labour Government, McComish trudged thousands of miles organising for the Labour movement.

He told the gathering of some 20 'Young Socialist' of a time during the depression when he heard that the then Prime Minister Forbes was to speak at a businessmen's luncheon in Palmerston North. McComish walked up to Palmerston North before the Prime Minister, and had 1,200 unemployed workers at the railway station to greet Forbes. By the time Forbes started to speak at the luncheon over 13,000 people were marching in protest around Palmerston's square.

McComish gave a huge part of his younger days to the Labour Party. Now, in his old age he finds them aligned with the right in preventing New Zealand's people from attaining a reasonable standard of living.

Pensioners, he said no longer "live" they merely exist, and the present Labour Party's treatment is a "damned disgrace". The government, he said doesn't treat pensioners as people.

McComish speaks for a great part of the membership of the Pensioners and Beneficiaries association. It contains many of the people who built the Labour movement in New Zealand and who now find themselves betrayed by the party they built. This explains the great bitterness apparent among pensioners. They feel that they have been sold out by the cause they worked for and hoped would be the foundation of a truly just society.

Both Mr McComish and the other pensioner Bill Durning who spoke to the 'Young Socialists' were received well by them, especially Mr Durning who expressed his belief that a true analysis of society must be based on an understanding of the theories of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tsetung.

What is disturbing, however, is the fact that the 'Young Socialists' chose to hold the meeting at one of their poorly attended forums. Students have much to learn from the situation and struggle of pensioners in our society, and to hide them away in the tennis pavilion on a Friday night is not serving this end.