TEACHER SUSPENDED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 16, 20 January 1933, Page 11

TEACHER SUSPENDED.

RESENTMENT BY COLLEAGUES LECTURES ON RUSSIA. As briefly reported by cable recently, the New South Wales Education Department has suspended a woman teacher, Miss Beatrice Taylor, who recently visited Russia, as a delegate from the New South Wales Educational Workers' League. Further details are given in newspaper files just to hand.

Those who support Miss Taylor contend that the Department's action raises the question of the individual rights of public servants generally. Public Service organisations, trade unions, and various educational bodies have been invited to send delegates to a conference which is to be held on January 24, to discuss the position. The grounds given for Miss Taylor's suspension are that by refusing to answer certain questions concerning a lecture she had delivered, slie had been guilty of misconduct and wilful disobedience, under the Public Service Act. Miss Taylor has been delivering a series of addresses on conditions in Russia. After an advertisement for a lecture which she delivered at Manly, had appeared, the Department communicated with her, asking whether she was the Miss Taylor referred to; whether the lecture had been delivered; and whether she was correctly described by the advertisement as a delegate of the Educational Workers' League. Miss Taylor did not answer the questions, but replied, it is understood, that they represented an infringement of her rights as a private citizen. She was then suspended.

Strong resentment has been caused among a section of teachers by the Department's action, and a body termed the "Beatrice Taylor Defence Committee" has been formed. This organisation contends that the lectures were purely of an educational nature, and had no political flavour; and that the Department is goinjr to lengths never intended in the Public Service Act. A circular letter, addressed by the committee, to numerous Public Service and other organisations, states: —

"This is the case of deliberate victimisation, and a direct attack upon the civic rights of all Public Servants. If such action is maintained, it follows that Public Servants, in reality, have no citizenship rights whatever. The matter calls for the strongest possible action on the part of Public Servants in defence of their rights," and on the part of all workers and liberal-minded people to uphold the principle of free speech "

Officials of the Education Department declined to make any comment, but pointed out that the matter would come before thePublie Service Board.