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

Legion collapses; 'Democrats' formed

Legion collapses; 'Democrats' formed

The Legion never became a highly organised coherent political force. It was an ultra-right movement with some fascist characteristics which was brought into being by the economic crisis. As the economic crisis waned so the Legion collapsed as a result of its ultra-democracy, lack of demagogic leadership, and its often contradictory and absurd policies. The Legion and other fascist organisations that developed in New Zealand were not called on by the ruling class to intervene and save bourgeois rule as they had been in many European countries.

With the collapse of the Legion, semi-fascist organisation emerged to fight the 1935 election. This party, the Democrat Party, had A.E. Davy as its organiser and recruited two of the dissidents from the Liberal Reform coalition—Veitch and Stallworthy. The Democrat Party stood 51 candidates. In spite of the fact that it only gained its leader, TCA Hislop, Major of Wellington, in August 1935 and announced its policy in October, it still managed to get 8% of the votes cast. The programme of the Democrat Party was:
1)to reduce the exchange rate to its natural level;
2)compensate farmers for the exchange change with subsidies;
3)repeal of the Rural Mortgagors Final Adjustment order;
4)all salary cuts restored and taxes reduced;
5)national health and pensions;
6)growth of bureaucratic government control severely reduced. Hislop denounced the Government for allowing its policy to be dictated by "three academic gentlemen . . . well known and convinced socialists (10)

This programme was demagogic in that it promised all things to all people. For instance it promised the restoration of wages and salaries to workers and National Health and Pension schemes which the Labour Party was parading as the substance of socialism. Examples of the rhetoric of their leaders, however, show these to be hollow promises (like all demagogic promises of fascists).