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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 35 no. 16. 1972

The Faction Line

The Faction Line

During the last anti-war mobilisation, two labour M.P.s in Wellington were noticed joining in the march at Marion Street. Gerald O.Brien walked round the corner to Manners Street before he unwillingly dragged himself away to go to the Russian Ballet. Joe Walding selftessly stayed in Wellington and walked all the way to Lambton Quay before he had to go and meet a constituent. How's that for Labour Party leadership!

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But if the parliamentary Labourites are too busy to march alf the way on a demonstration, some of their mates aren't. On July 14, Neville Pickering. Labour mayor of Christchurch, will be leading the mobilisation there. Pickering's activities over Anzac Day and the South Africa tour in the past show that there's at least one prominent Labourite in the country whose capable giving some real leadership.

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We mentioned a while ago that Devon Biggs spends many happy evenings pounding the streets of Kelburn, listening to his transistor. But Devon's jogging is not just for exercise or unimpeded listening. Like afl good agents of Reichsmarshal Gilbert, Devon carrys on the bat: tie against Judaeo - communism day and night. Recently on his runs he's been ripping down Mobilisation posters in Kelburn.

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Revolutionary leninism in New Zealand is dead. The Vanguard revolutionary party of the working class is but a pack of wankers.

Dedicated revolutionists will remember Bill Logan's article in Salient 9 attacking reformist politics. Logan said the immediate aim of his Sparticist League "must be to build a vanguard party which will intervene in the day-to-day struggles of the working class to lead them nearer to the revolution."

As Mao Tse-Tung said more than once, practice is just as important as theory. So what happened when the working class came to its vanguard? Bill Logan had a party a few weeks ago. An exclusive party at that. Word of his party mysteriously passed round the "Duke" the Friday night it was held. As other parties proved to be off, several patrons of the "Duke" went up to Bill's place in the Glen, home of all true revolutionary teninists. Some of them were bikies -real aristocrats of labour because you need to earn a decent wage to afford to run a bike They were not welcome at the party of the vanguard. Tenaciously they stayed. Reports reaching us say that they spilled beer on the carpet and smashed an Asian antique.

Nor was principled Marxist conflict absent. Someone at the party was wearing a fancy hat. Various workers wanted to wear the hat and so a dispute arose as to who should wear the hat -a typically principled Marxist conflict over basic political power grows out of the barral of a gun, the dispute logically lad to the use of force to sieze power over headgear for the working class.

The vanguard party of the working class, true to Lenin's word, intervened all right in the day-to-day struggles of the working class. Logan called the police to remove the bikies. Ask Bill if that helped to "lead then nearer and nearer to the revolution"?

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The Wellington District Council of the Federation of Labour at its Monthly Meeting on June 28, resolved:

"That the Wellington Committee on Vietnam be written to and advised that the Wellington District Council supports the Campaign in conformity with the Policy of the New Zealand Federation of Labour as laid down at every Annual Conference of the N.Z. F.O.L. since 1966."

The Wellington District Council wished the Committee every success in its efforts to bring an end to the War Against the Vietnam People.