Brigadier—Take Note

In our opinion, Brigadier, instead of people being warned about the menace of Communism they should be warned about the menace of a Security Police which is vastly more inimical to their interests.

For the Brigadier's information, the Party does not function "on a clandestine and conspiratorial basis" as he asserts. Our programme "New Zealand's Road to Socialism" is a public document. Our candidates participate in Parliamentary and Local Body elections. In our literature and public meetings we state our views openly and unequivocally. And if our membership lists are not open to the scrutiny of the Security Police that is hardly surprising in view of the real purposes and aims of that organisation.

Up to recently, governments in this country have tried to keep the existence of a secret police—not to mention its operations—out of the public eye and with good reason. The role played by the infamous Gestapo, first in Germany and then in Occupied Europe, showed the people what could result from secret police operating under the banner of anti-Communism. So it was good politics not to publicise Security.

Why then the Brigadier's present public utterances? The Government is seeking to divert the people's attention from the economic, political and military abyss into which it is dragging New Zealand at the tail of U.S. cold war policy. What more natural than that the anti-Communist card should be played by one of its specialists in anti-Communism, linked up with a spy scare? It is a trusted device for diverting attention. But for University Student Worker or Farmer, it is also a dangerous which leads on the road of McCarthyism and Fascism.