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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 7. April 10 1978

The Labour Party Line

The Labour Party Line

It only needs a little reflection on the "legislative programmes" of past Labour governments to see that a "strong, well based and active labour movement" is absolute anathema to the Labour Party. Labour introduced deregistration of trade unions and used that particular "legislative programme" many more times than National. Labour initiated dawn raids on overstaying workers. Labour's senior spokesmen have claimed that they have had a gutsfull of the unions" and that "National has joined with the communists to destroy New Zealand."

The Labour Party is just as commited to upholding the capitalist system as the National Party, whatever illusions may be held about it.

Back to Andersen's remit which called for stopwork rallies to mobilise workers behind the NZLP. "This is the single most important remit before the conference", brayed Andersen.

The only difference between the right and the so called left on the issue was whether or not stopwork meetings should be held to rally support for the NZLP. As Skinner quite correctly pointed out the Labour Party doesn't like stopwork meetings.

It is highly significant that the stop-work meetings in support of the election of Labour already called by the Auckland Trades Council were, in the main, a series of failures. It was only when the pro-Labour party propaganda was dropped from the advertizing and replaced by calls to discuss concrete problems, such as unemployment and the fall of living standards that workers began to show some interest in such meetings.

Unhappily for the right wing union leaders the workers are becoming justifiably disenchanted with capitalism's Labour Party.