Radical

The university Labour group at the 1968 Conference was this year in its seventh year as a distinctive group there. This is the first occasion when it has produced a 'radical' programme on such issues as SEATO, Malaysia, and the Police Offences Amendment and Public Safety Conservation Acts. The Princes Street branch has in previous years refused to adopt an anti-SEATO branch as has Victoria University branch, while as president of the Auckland Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Dr. Michael Bassett refused to take an anti-SEATO stand. The only reason for the sudden step towards ''radicalism' is the desire to win over the trade unions which blocked the universities' plans for constitutional reform last year. But the universities have always opposed most of the steps toward socialism endorsed by the 1968 F.O.L. Conference, and, as Mrs Rosslyn Noonan stated at the youth conference reject socialism as an alternative for the Party. This is not to suggest that trade unions, given a choice between full employment under capitalism or socialism would not reject socialism out of hand as they did in 1929; but the unions' claims for higher pay and a more egalitarian society are not sincerely supported by Princes Street, which aims for a politics of "values" not "material interest" whatever this may mean; and trade union radicalism finds no echo in the university branches. The university branches' unofficial public relations officer, Professor Robert Chapman, took great pains to cleanse the branches' image over the NZBC by suggesting, quite wrongly, that the university branches received no union support, showing what the universities really think of the unions. The unions have always suspected the university branches of joining the Labour Party simply to get safe seats for pale pink academies at the expense of wage-earners, and they are quite right.

The biggest outcry against Party HQ Victoria University branch raised last year was when a watersider was selected for the Eastern Maori seat. This year the campaign to win over the unions won, Murray Rowlands the most 'left' candidate the universities could dig up (he variously describes himself as Trotskyist, an anarchist and a Labour Party loyalist) even pot one union block vote when standing for the Party's national executive. But the universities have run out of radical ideas after their radical splurge this conference and it will take them some time to think of some more. In the meantime, the universities' one unshakeable alliance, with the worst elements in the Labour Party, the apathetic branches willing to delegate representation to anyone, will in the long run dictate their policy by making them dependent for representatives at conference on the rotten boroughs of the Party.