For some strange reason I feel compelled to reply to columnist Chris Trotter’s comments of last week. Poor Chris sits on the outside looking through the window pulling faces at those who don’t conform or pay him. He represents the ‘commentariat’ who hover and hoover around Wellington looking for handouts. Chris, in a defence of using of taxpayers’ money to produce a plastic pledge card in this paper said, “social peace for a paltry half-million dollars? Strikes me as the most courageous and forgivable kind of corruption”, that’s been the excuse of the Mugabes and Stalins throughout the ages. Chris refuses to take these words back but how can you? They are incapable of being misunderstood.

An old colleague rang and cruelly reminded me how, as Party leader, I had said the front page of the paper is always there for whoever unloads a bucket on the Party, as David Lange did, calling on me to increase taxes.

Just as remorse was almost getting the better of me, Jim Anderton as the designated ‘hitman’ and did a ‘Tony Soprano’ on me, proving my point. Unlike Jim, I gave the Labour Movement the best ‘hairs’ of my life. Jim Anderton opposed all the policies that have made NZ successful, and now in stunning ignorance of cause and effect, claims the credit for NZ’s success. He opposed closer economic relations with Australia, the Uruguay Trade round and opening our Universities to overseas students, GST, reform of the waterfront, opening communications, demanding a guarantee no jobs would be lost. Sorry, even Kazakhstan no longer has manual telephone exchanges.

Jim and Chris haven’t voted Labour for 20 years or more. Jim was once a ‘right-winger’ and, with Roger Douglas, wrote a new constitution for the Party that would have kicked out the Unions, Norm Kirk forced him out. When Norm was safely dead, he sneaked back into the Party and, sponsored by Roger Douglas and Michael Bassett, became President of the Party.

Chris and his mates are masterful at branding dissenters, anyone who opposed or questioned them. The normal technique is, accuse someone of being ‘right wing’ - case made, nothing left to discuss. Heretic! An old technique perfected by Stalin and exposed in Nikita Khrushchev’s famous speech to the Party Congress in 1958, where the words ‘political correctness’ were first used. Stalin said Krushchev originated the concept of “enemy of the people”. “This term rendered it unnecessary that the ideological error of a man engaged in controversy be proven.”

You can now understand how a Bill has been introduced into Parliament that could ban published dissent for 12 months before an election, which could even ban books. That Bill needs to be ripped up and Labour should not attack John Key for being rich and successful. His social mobility is his strong point, thus it’s silly as National attacking Helen because she’s a woman.

The line is that I’m bitter, bored, disappointed, that my life has been a failure, even that I’m mad, an old Stalinist line, too. Directions have gone out to letter-writers and talk-back, I’ve seen the emails. I have not deserted the battlers, as suggested, I spend 40% of my time on good works, mainly in Third World countries, and with centre-left groups.

Labour has a story to tell, all this, my contribution, too, I’m sorry to say, is taking the attention off the showman and shallowmen who have replaced the hollowmen of the National Party. The thought of the National Party its arrogance and sense of entitlement back in power is unbearable.