Sectarian bias alleged
THE national lecturer of the Protestant Political Association, the Rev. Howard Elliott, said during a lecture in Dunedin yesterday, he had been accused of splitting the Labour Party because he had stated that the official Labour Party was in alliance with Rome.
He contended that there were evidences of leanings of the official Labour organ in New Zealand to Romanism. and quoted instances in support of his view.
An attempt was being made to get Roman Catholics as secretaries and to
get them on to conferences of unions. And if the Roman Catholics got into these positions they would run them not in the interests of Labour, but in the interests of the Roman Catholic Church. With genuine unionism the P.P.A. had hearty sympathy.
With genuine Labour, with the men who stood for social regeneration, and with the amelioration of every hard condition in the lot of the worker the P.P.A. had every sympathy. It hoped that, at the next election, it would secure Protestant Labour men who would go into Parliament on the P.P.A. organisation. Let Protestant unionists take an interest in their unions and see that the Roman Catholic Church did not get control of them or of the union executives, or dominate the Political Labour Representation Committee. In regards to the public service, he said it was not possible to tell how many members of the service were Roman Catholics.
At one time it was necessary for an applicant for employment to state his
religion, but that column in the application form had now been struck out. From the facts in his possession, it would appear, however, that at least 33 per cent. of the Civil Service was Roman Catholic, and yet the Roman Catholics were only 14 per cent. of the population of the dominion. It might be necessary yet for the association to say, ‘‘We insist that the Government shall see that there is not more than oneseventh of the Civil Service who are Roman Catholics.’’ If the number allowed got our of proportion it was a dire menace to the country.
The P.P.A. had for its declaration this: ‘‘I am a British subject and a Protestant. I am not married to a Roman Catholic, nor will I marry one.’’ They were asking the Protestant men and women to find wives and husbands among their own people.
They were asking their young men and women to stand by their own faith in the matter of the marriage relation, and to tread the path that led more certainly to conjugal happiness. Oil and water would not mix. Some things never would mix, and among those things were Protestantism and Romanism.
Let the Protestants stand together and realise that there were vital interests at stake. Let them see that the Government, which did the will of the Protestants and administered the laws, not in the interests of one section, but in the interests of all. Let them have a political organisation that would encompass New Zealand, and as far as they could they would make the Parliament and the administration what is ought to be, by returning the right men to represent them. — ODT, 21.5.1918.