MILITARY DEFAULTERS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 86, 22 January 1946, Page 5

MILITARY DEFAULTERS

WATERSIDERS’ STATEMENT (P.A.) WELLINGTON, January 21. “Recently daily newspaper reports of statements made by the officers of the Auckland and Wellington Waterside Workers’ Union on the question oi military defaulters now serving indeterminate sentences having inspired understandable, if erroneous, illation, we wish to reply to certain unjustifiable criticism levelled at our organisation,” says a statement by the Wellington Watersider Workers’ Union over a signature of the president (Mr R. O’Donnell), tile secretary (Mr E. A. Napier), and the walking delegate (Mr J. E. Napier). “An analysis of our statement on January 7, if made with the tolerance and balance so necessary in an approach to such a problem, discloses the following facts:-—the Wellington union had asked the Government to define the position of the men detained, because of their refusal to go to war on conscientious grounds. The matter of interminate sentences; had been discussed by and was disapproved of by the Wellington Trades Union Movement. The Wellington union had not discussed and was not contemplating action such as was decided upon by the Auckland branch of our union. Surely there is nothing disclosed in the foregoing to cause the perturbation so displayed but just our democratic right of opinion.

“As to the Auckland branch decisions, all we can say at this juncture is that it would appear that, rightly or wrongly, a decision to protest actively was reached in a democratic manner at a branch meeting and that the Auckland branch has the highest percentage of returned soldiers from this and the last war of any branch of the New Zealand Waterside Workers’ Union, it is claimed.”