Heavy-Footed Police

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27861, 9 January 1956, Page 8

Heavy-Footed Police

The police in Christchurch were unreasonably hasty in breaking up a party of youths and girls who were dancing at the base of the Godley statue in Cathedral square xm Friday evening. The reason given by the police was that the dancers were creating a disturbance and causing an obstruction. As to the obstruction, the police did not wait to see whether a sufficiently large crowd would be attracted to block free movement on that side of the Square. They would have had to wait a long time, probably. As to the disturbance, this was a harmless display of holiday high spirits, clearly distinguishable from the crawling that has disturbed Auckland and Wellington recently. Tn fact, official disapproval of what the police consider eccentric behaviour could very easily lead to trouble, making the eccentrics resentful and encouraging other youths to take the task of suppression into their own hands. Possibly the police were moved by no more than a feeling that this jitterbugging was unseemly and in some way disrespectful to the memory of the Founder of Canterbury. But those of the spectators who expressed their feelings were not shocked by the dancing, preferring the nimble stepping of the youngsters to the heavy-footedness of the police. The police intervention might, possibly, do no great harm as an isolated action, if it were not that any unnecessary interference with the liberty of the subject establishes a bad precedent. New Zealanders like to think that as long as they keep within the law and cause neither harm nor offence to others they are free to behave as they wish. In this they are following the liberty-loving example of the men who settled the country, including John Robert Godley.