Sunday, March 29, 2015

AUSTRALIAN STAND AGAINST CONSCRIPTION CAUSED UPROAR IN NEW ZEALAND

Another  Little  Darwin special  to mark WWl
 Another  Malcolm Fraser on war notice .
 
The   Canterbury Times , Christchurch , New Zealand ,1916 special  Christmas number , in the midst of  the grotesque war ,  contained  a  poem , SING A  SONG OF SANTA CLAUS, the  last few verses forced to acknowledge the war ... Somewhere beyond the angry battle’s din /Beyond  the  clash of  bayonet and  shelling/ Some nations must bear witness that within /Their   hearts  the love of  brotherhood is  dwelling...
Semple

 

Extensive  coverage  was  given  to charges of sedition against miners' inspector, Robert " Bob" Semple ,who started work at  the  age of nine in a  Lithgow, NSW, coal mine and then  goldfields ; black banned on Australian  minefields because of his activism, he  moved to New Zealand  under an assumed name .

A large crowd, including prominent "Socialists,"  packed  the Christchurch Magistrate’s Court  on December 12  when  Semple was charged with having on November 26, at Wellington, expressed a  seditious intention , contrary to a regulation made on September 20,1915, under the War Regulation Act, 1914.

Semple , who had participated in the successful No Conscription  campaign in  Australia speaking against Prime Minister Billy "the Little Digger " Hughes , opened by saying he conveyed fraternal greetings  from  Australia  from  those who put up a great fight .  It  was  their wish  that  New Zealand    should show  some kind of  manly resistance  against the coercion  of  the Military Service Act ,1916.  The democracy of Australia, he said , had  risen to the occasion and  rejected  conscription, a most glorious victory.

"Under our glorious British government that we hear so much about we have 80,000 soldiers today engaged and permanently kept  in Ireland to keep the Irish peasants  noses to the grindstone, to keep the land for the monopolists. They are paid Government assassins  kept there to strangle the ambitions of  the Irish. As far as Australia was concerned ,the conscription issue  was not fought by the capitalists to win the war, but to screw the workers industrially and smash their organisation."

Semple said Broken Hill ,NSW, miners and other Australian  working class people were not going to be bound and gagged by proclamation and  reactionary law.In British countries there was going to be an awakening of the working class , bound in chains for ages , slowly and surely their liberties taken away in New Zealand , as shown by recent laws passed  by parliament .

"Wealthy monopolists of this country  are taking advantage of  the war  to steal the people’s liberty in the name of patriotism and some day the masses  will wake up and find themselves  bound and fettered,"the court was  told  he said , according  to his speech taken down in shorthand by a reporter  hired  by  police .

Soundly condemned were the Shylocks, the bloodhounds , the bloody  demons who bled  their  workers and cast the  world’s civilisation into the melting pot because of their greed for gold and private lust for place and power, though men and women  may drop dead  with the shock of  their last boy being murdered .

Semple made a similar speech in Auckland in which he said his involvement in the Australian anti conscription campaign had kindled a spirit of rebellion in his soul, and  he was prepared to go to jail. He told the gathering he had in his pocket  a telegram saying miners could be exempted from conscription, but  they would not accept this bribe .The political system was rooted in hell, the churches infamous dens administering  chloroform and  dope .

He was sentenced  to 12 months’ imprisonment . At the time of the court hearing the Canterbury Times  ran reports of  meetings  in various parts of  the country for and against  conscription. One from Greymouth Patriotic Society  applauded the government  over  conscription, the chairman of  the meeting quoted as saying those against were   against  everything .
 

When the war broke out in 1914  it was claimed it would be over  by Christmas  that year and a large number of men volunteered  for service.  As  the war dragged on with a rapidly  rising  death and  wounded  toll , it was difficult to find replacements in sufficient numbers. Thus conscription was  brought in , only opposed by four politicians.
 
The Canterbury Times edition mentioned here contained a Roll of Honour , a broadsheet page, full of dead and injured, including the names of some in  two lists issued in Sydney 

By  the end of 1918 , 30,00 men  had  been conscripted . At first it only applied to Pakehas (Europeans) but was extended to include Maoris .  Semple was elected to parliament in that year, a little  more than a year after he had served  his prison sentence . In the first  Labor  Government in New Zealand in 1935 he  was  Minister  for  Public Works and  later Minister  for Railways , becoming the  party’s  face  of  infrastructure building .   

The  veteran Kiwi  Labour politician and author , John A. Lee, who lost an arm in WWl, was critical of Semple , saying  he  had  been a physical dynamo in earlier years but  had  become " an extinct volcano," wearing a  top hat  to Cabinet meetings . 

In 1948 Semple backed compulsory military training  and even  drew the  first marble for that  service  which  in the eyes of left wing critics was  an  act of  betrayal.  Semple  said it was necessary because of  the threat from Communism  and that year wrote a pamphlet,Why I Fight Communism.