Another Little Darwin special to mark WWl
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Another Malcolm Fraser on war notice .
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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...
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| 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.
