Bring out your Dead

A political paper must be as dependent on the whims of fate as is a politician. 1951 will see the centennials black-bordered: an obituary year in the history of New Zealand journalism. It has seen the demise of two political journals.

"The Southern Cross" was born in 1946,—by the Labour political machine, out ofhe pockets of socialist workers. Pretences at socialism died out when Les Edwards' editorials ceased in 1917, and Dick Scott's "Farm Notes" grew fewer and further between. Faithful unto death was a handful of young L.P. members on the reporting and sub-editoring staff. Maybe these relies of a socialist conscience were responsible for the ghosts that appeared from time to time in odd comers of the paper to haunt the dreams of senescent front-benchers . . . Reports of public meetings of the Peace Council, an interview with Professor Rhodes (Russian snow still glistening on his boots), unbiased comments on industrial news, a remarkable admission on the Sharma case . . . The report of smiling Chinese soldiers helping a southbound British truck out of the Korean mud was headed "Tommy Meets 'the Enemy' "... A photo of MacArthur with a caption from Moscow "New Times," was headlined: "MacArthur—Criminal" . . . The earlier policy of suppressing unfavourable letters broke down towards the end, and the floodgates were opened to the noisy torrent of old Labourites protesting against the Labour leadership, against a servile foreign policy, against encroachments on civil liberties, and faltering unionism . . . How often buzzed the lines from the Prime Minister's office (happy days) and the Biscuit Workers' Union . . . shrill protests against protests.

Our second mourned last appeared last year. She is "Charta"—no twinkling starts imagined in her name, but dry old parchments,—an implied contrast between leftist romanticism and rightist "rule of law." She was younger, never saw her second birthday. The rich, the great, and the respectable, who had often grieved at VUC christenings, drank Charta's toast with much cheer as she was dunked in the water. An antidote to Salient, to the Socialist Club, to the deplorable fellow-travelling liberalism that was overcoming the SCM. Dammitall, Lenin, was quite right—got to have a press to put the line across. . . Half-a-dozen issues of cheap jack sensation, an occasional thought worth the ink and the paper. There grows a substantial conception abroad that Charta lives on the smell of a negative. How often does its parent society meet? Its largest meeting, harangued by a retired general, is greeted in the daily papers as being "dominated by the Socialist Club." Ah me! Tomorrow fresh woods and pastures new, said the shepherd-boy when his cobber Lycidas kicked the bucket. Charta's latest editor goes marching into the throne of Salient, and Charta gasps and dies.

Southern Cross and Charta: "They were lonely and pleasant in their lives, and in death they were not divided."