Cook Islonds Workers

and Mr. Harold Ward

Letter to the Editor AS one interested in events in the Cook Islands over the past two and a half years, and associated with the efforts to establish the Cook Islands Industrial Union of Workers (an affiliation of the New Zealand Federation of Labour), per mit me to endorse the sentiments ex pressed by your correspondent, “Quarter Century Cook Islands.” in the “Pacific Islands Monthly,” of April, 1948, regard ing the constructive activities of Mr, Harold Ward on behalf of the people of the Cook Islands.

In your editorial note you state, “If Mr. Ward, no matter how good his motives, should ally himself with our enemies, he cannot hope to escape criticism.” I am sure all your readers will agree that “if” and “should” he do so there is no hope of escape from critic ism and possibly worse.

In justice to Mr. Ward, we would be pleased if you would publish the follow ing extract from the report of the two delegates of the New Zealand Federation of Labour (T. Anderson and K. Baxter) who went to the Cook Islands in June, 1946: “It was Mr. Ward, more than any other person or organisation who was instrumental in investigating the shock ing conditions under which native volunteer labourers from Rarotonga were required to work on the French phosphate island of Makatea. We de sire to record our indebtedness to Mr.

Ward, whose help in bringing us into contact with the workers at Rarotonga facilitated what otherwise might have been an impossible task.”

It was per medium of the RSA and the Teachers’ Guild organised by Harold Ward that contact with the people of Rarotonga was made, and the instructions from the CIPA “headquarters” in Auck land not to recognise the official New Zealand trade union delegation was largely defeated, an increase in the wage rates of the waterside workers conceded, regula tions gazetted, and a union later registered giving workers the right to organise.

As one who has been closely associated with many phases of trade union activity and working-class thought in Australia and New Zealand over a period of 35 years, I failed to observe the remotest as sociation or sympathy by Mr. H. Ward with any ideology on the “Left” or the “Right.” On the contrary, it was evident to T. Anderson and myself that Mr Ward’s activities were evidence of a genuine desire to further the welfare of all of the peoples in the Pacific Islands.

I am, etc.,

K. Baxter.

Sec., NZ. Federation of Labour.

Wellington, June 2, 1948.