Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 23. September 12 1977

The Trends of the Time

The Trends of the Time

Summing up this period of New Zealand', political history the following sonclusions can be made:
1. The economic crisis promoted intensified class struggle which in turn developed splits in the bourgeois class on how to handle the crisis.
2. Disillusionment with Parliament and the bourgeois parties, except the Labour Party, developed as successive governments failed to meet the crisis and produced policies which aimed at saving capitalism by attacking the people's welfare.
3. Fascist and right-wing organisations sprouted and some grew rapidly.
4. The coalition paved the way for fascism with a number of reactionary measures. These measures were not struggled against by the Labour Party outside Parliament, and they failed to repeal acts such as the Public Safety Conservation Act 1932 when they became the Government.
5. The Labour Party refused to enter into a United Front against the fascist threat and the reactionary measures of the coalition inspite of repeated requests from the Communist Party to do so. Thus they helped to divide the struggle which developed outside Parliament.

Although most of the necessary conditions for a fascist takeover were present, fascism failed. The reason was that instead of being disillusioned by the social democrats (the Labour Party) working people united behind them in the 1935 election to bring about their landslide victory.