Bennett’s reds under the beds speech brilliant theatre
"I am dismayed that this country has to endure an experiment that is put on to it by one man's false fallacies and this country will have to pay for a decade to turn around that socialist experiment." David Bennett, naysayer
I wonder if David Bennett reads the Washington Post.
It would seem unlikely. About two days after the newspaper that will forever be identified with its fearless investigation of the Watergate scandal sought to out our new Labour-led coalition Government as a ‘‘far right’’ conspiracy, the equally fearless Member of Parliament for Hamilton East arose in the House of Representatives and gave a speech for the ages.
Bennett’s analysis of the ideological bent of the new administration was diametrically opposed to that of the Post. The conspiracy was not of the right, it was of the left. There were reds under the bed and by God, he, David Bennett, would have none of it. The MP’S theme was that of the ‘‘socialist experiment’’. Such was his enthusiasm for the phrase that it became less a structuring principal of his oratory than a Buddhist mantra.
As Justin Bieber is to ‘‘baby’’, so David Bennett is to ‘‘socialist’’. He favoured the House no less than 26 times with the word, on each occasion attempting to snarl it out with more venom than the one previous.
His concluding statement, delivered with the manner of vitriol usually associated with rabid dogs, attempted to resurrect the spectre of Karl Marx.
Though undone by a double negative – grammar matters not when you are in the heat of passion – Bennett’s point was magnificently transparent: ‘‘I am dismayed that this country has to endure an experiment that is put on to it by one man’s false fallacies and this country will have to pay for a decade to turn around that socialist experiment. It will not work. It cannot work. It has been proven time and time again in the history of the world to never work... We know socialism is alive, but it will be dead at the next election and all of you with it.’’
An outright death threat was a suitably melodramatic, if technically illegal, note to finish on.
Bennett’s stagecraft did not let him down at this crucial moment, either. He waved an accusatory finger at the Government benches, as though he were some kind of avenging spirit, the very soul of peeved capitalism.
I was reminded of the many occasions on which our paths have crossed in the lobbies of Hamilton’s Riverlea and Meteor theatres.
If nothing else, David is a champion of the arts. He clearly has picked up an acting tip here and there. If he’s free over the pantomime season – and opposition MPS really don’t have all that much to do – an audition or two would not be out of order. He would make a fine Widow Twankey.
It is certain that Bennett has no future as either teacher or student of history. One wonders what exactly he was taught at St John’s College or Victoria University. Perhaps the Great Depression never came up? Has he not heard of Michael Joseph Savage and the first Labour Government? How about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal? And what of the foundations of the British welfare state in the years that followed the Second World War?
In each case, societies that were devastated by rampant, unfettered capitalism and war turned to socialism. It worked out rather nicely. There was employment, education, housing and an attempt at social justice.
To grant the devil his due, at least Bennett made an attempt at a philosophical statement. However, to read the transcript of his address is to be presented with all manner of confusion and anomalies.
Use of the phrase ‘‘privileged elite of the socialist class’’, for example, betrays such a fundamental misunderstanding of terminology that Bennett would be best advised to take advantage of Labour’s new free year of tertiary study and take a refresher course in political science.
Granted, there is some novelty in having a Government whose policies are consistent with its ideological underpinnings, in having a Labour Government that’s actually interested in the welfare of working people as opposed to one indistinguishable from National. However, to castigate socialists for being socialistic is a rather pointless exercise in emotive name calling, not so much a pot calling a kettle black as a pot calling a kettle a kettle.
One would hope that there are socialists in a Labour Party much as there are capitalists in a National Party, environmentalists in a Green Party, those enamoured of Winston Peters in a New Zealand First Party and advocates of the feline holocaust in the Opportunities Party. Ideally, that’s how democracy works.