political party - with roots extending into every city, every suburb and every street of the nation. Oh, how their laughter would cease when a party like that started rising in the opinion polls. And, oh, how quickly their power would crumble when that party became linked to a militant trade union movement, with members in every factory, in every shop, in every office, and – yes – in every university. "Don’t mourn", said the great American union leader, Joe Hill, as they led him out to be executed, "organise!" And he was right. It can be done. It has been done – right here in New Zealand. The Labour Party, in its socialist phase, had all of the attributes that I have listed above, and it used them to transform New Zealand. It is one of the great ironies – and the great tragedies - of our history, that it was Labour which, fifty years after the election of Mickey Savage’s Government, set about destroying its socialist legacy. But what they could not destroy was the s...
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