At last week's annual conference of the New Zealand Labour Party, representatives of the Federation of Labour demanded a return to a program of "full socialism." At the Federation of Labour conference a few weeks! ago an executive committee motion affirming its belief in the class struggle and accusing the so-called "new look" Labour leaders of abandoning socialist principles, was passed unaninously. The Federation represents the bulk of New Zealand's trade unions, comprising over a quarter of a million workers. At the Labour Party conference, Federation delegates said that no "new look" could disguise the reality of the class struggle, nor the reality of capitalist exploitation. However, a motion put forward by them to put back into Party policy the "socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange" was defeated. This policy had been dropped from the program 38 years ago. In a contest for the Party presidency, a right wing intellectual was heavily defeated by 40-year-old N.E. Kirk, a vigorous M.P. who has been associated with the industrial left.
At the present time the right wing leadership of the Party is rather discredited.. Despite the fact that its tame reformist program was adopted as the platform at the General Election in November last year, the elector ate failed to return it to power. The left now have a good chance to devise a socialist strategy for the Party. This strategy will have to take into account that the industrial working class is a sociological minority. Sections of the office workers and farmers will have to be mobilised behind slogans of a sort which will enable a transition to socialism,