Sir,—In the issue of Salient printed on Tuesday June 18 1963. Mr. G. R. Hawke makes the assertion that the Communist Party of New Zealand has become as conventional as any other party. He appears to base his argument upon the intention of the CPNZ to campaign in the 1963 General Elections and upon a statement by Mr. Ron Smith defining revolution as 'a rapid process of change.' To my personal knowledge the CPNZ has put up tickets at each General Election since 1949 as well as standing candidates in local body and trade union elections. The portrait Mr. Hawke paints is however, scarcely recognisable as being that of the party which has 'for years held aloft the revolutionary banner of Marxism-Leninism in Oceania and has united all the democratic and progressive forces in New Zealand in vigorously waging the struggle against imperialism. Cde. Lui Ning-I of China at the Easter 1963 CPNZ Conference held in Auckland.

While Mr. Ron Smith as a senior officer of Industries and Commerce Department, and a tireless campaigner for peace and better toilets at Island Bay School, may prefer to avoid airing in public the concept of revolution subscribed to by the Party of which he is a member, the official statements of the CPNZ and the Government Party of China place revolution in a different perspective.

In a joint statement of these parties signed by V. G. Wilcox on May 25 1963 in Peking on behalf of Mr. Ron Smith and other Communist Party members, we read interalia that in the struggle to realize the general goal (I.e. proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat) the party of the working class invariably wishes to achieve the transition to socialism peacefully, but it must at all times devote major attention to the arduous work of gathering revolutionary strength and must fully prepare itself for non-peaceful transition . . . . .The illusory view that the reactionary ruling classes may hand over power voluntarily is, in fact, a modern version of social democracy.'

Readers who wish to make further researches into the pro-Chinese line of the CPNZ and the China-Russia split will find the April and May 1963 issues of the NZ Communist Review and the June 21 and May 31 issues of the Peking Review rewarding sources of information.

In view of these positions adopted by the responsible officials of the New Zealand and Chinese parties I have great difficulty in accepting the validity of Mr Hawke's argument and can only hope that the objective conditions never become 'ripe' in New Zealand. The only good reasons I can see for granting election rights to the CPNZ are that these will enable the party to have increased contact with the sound common sense of the people of New Zealand and so corrupt the revolutionary vigour of their Marxism-Leninism.