all black tour committee FORMED IN CITY

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29002, 17 September 1959, Page 17

all black tour committee FORMED IN CITY

protest Against N.Z.R.U. Decision A Christchurch Citizens’ All Black Tour Association was formed last evening with the object ? lscrimi nation in the selection of the 1960 AD Black team to tour South Africa, and to demand abandonment of the tour if absolute equality of treatment cannot be assured.” A meeting of about 250 persons supported the fortnation of the association. When the Mayor of Christchurch (Mr G. Manning), who was chairman, put the motion there were only two voices, both women s, against it, and only one man spoke against the decision. ° The meeting, which filled the Canterbury Museum lecture hall, contained men and women of every political party known in New Zealand, Maoris Chinese and Pacific Islanders, at least two former All Blacks, many clergymen, leading members of the trade union movement, prominent sportsmen and representatives of several professions. A proposal that if a Rugby team did go to South Africa it should be “adequately labelled” if it did not contain Maoris was rejected. It did not even attract a seconder after critics had said it was sometimes better to fail than have a “weak success.”

Those who had been associated In calling the meeting presented 1 tne resolution because they be--1 lieved in good Rugby footbaU, I even more in the good name of New Zealand throughout the I world, and more still in the rights of the Maori citizens, said the Rev. A. A. Brash, secretary of the National Council of Churches, who opened the discussion. "We give the New Zealand Rugby Union credit for its good motives in excluding Maoris to save the Maoris from insults in South Africa; but just to be quite sure they are not insulted in South Africa, the Rugby Union adopts a policy which insults them here.” he said. “If New Zealand people really take equality seriously they must do something about it.” Mr Brash said Brigadier J. T. Burrows had said he was convinced that there would not be incidents if the Maoris were to be included in the team. He had also had a letter from a Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa saying he had asked Government supporters. Government critics and the people of several races in South Africa for their views. They all agreed that there need have been no incidents. A chocolate-skinned member of a tennis team W’hich toured South Africa recently was “ the most popular one. Mr Brash said, and it was worth noting that just when the New Zealand Rugby Union decision was announced South Africa had intimated that it would not exclude coloured athletes from its own population from representing it at the Olympic Games.

“White Supremacy Over” “The era of white supremacy is over, and the coloured races are rightly sensitive to injustice anywhere." Mr Brash continued. “We know, if we are honest, that in New Zealand we have never really lived up to our own principles in this matter of race, but we have at least been committed to equality, and basically we have tried to live by it. We believe we must do the fair thing by the Maori people now in this Rugby tour issue not because of what other people think, but because the Maoris are our people, and we care about them and we will not have them insulted.” It was better that there should be no tour than that New Zealand should commit “this crime of racial descrimination,” he said. “When the Maori stood at the recruiting office in 1940 they didn't say: “We can’t send this man away because he might have to fight on the same field as a South African and it might cause embarrassment,” said Mr N. Gray, who described himself as a representative of the Tramway Union and a part-Maori. “But now they say we can’t send him to South Africa to pay Rugby. Unfortunately, it is not South Africa that says that, but our own New Zealand Rugby Union. “We don’t want the Government to lay down legislation that there will be no tour. We want to hear you say from your hearts: ‘Away with this thing. It stinks. We won't have it.’ ” It would be easy for the Government to stop the tour, Mr Gray claimed, but the question was one for individuals. They must ask themselves whether they could afford to insult the Maori people. Rugby and Race Relations Those who had sponsored the meeting were in no way hostile to New Zealand’s “national religion” of Rugby, said Dr. R. Duff, director of the Canterbury Museum. Rugby football was one of the things for which New Zealand was noted overseas: and until recently the other thing was the Maori-pakeha relations. Whatever happened. New Zealand should look at the state of its racial health, Dr. Duff said. In the main. New Zealand pakehas had dedicated themselves to the implied promise of the Treaty of Waitangi that the Maori and pakeha were equal under the law. There had been confusion in reported statements on segregation and racial discrimination. Segregation, he described as a device to support the Maoris' cultural right as a minority. There were separate Maori schools, a Maori Affairs Department, and separate Parliamentary electorates.

“It is possible for one political party to capture the four Maori seats, and the Maori’s voice can be muffled,” said Dr. Duff. “What is absent in the House of Representatives is one of the members of Parliament who can speak for the Maori race as a whole. Mr Tirikatene spoke on the Rugby tour recently, but he spoke in his tribal capacity. We need a return to the situation that prevailed from 1868 to 1950, when there was provision for four Maori members of Parliament and it was provided that one of the members would be on the Executive Council representing the Maori race. Mr Nash Silent

“Now the Maoris are gagged as • matter of party political tactics. Whatever we do about the Rugby

Union, I hope this matter will sink home. “Mr Nash is the Prime Minister and Minister of Maori Affairs. At present, his silence condemns his fitness to hold the portfolio of Maori Affairs.” Discrimination was based on a perverted belief in the inferiority of certain races—“that is anthropological nonsense”—and while there was no official discrimination in New Zealand there was a good deal of discrimination in some parts of the North Island, where it was exercised by some cinemas, hotels, boarding-houses, some employers and even some hospital matrons. “Do we come of age now as a nation and have our two races merged in harmony?” was the question Dr. Duff left with the meeting.

Mr W. A. Meates, who toured South Africa with the 1949 All Blacks, described a meeting he had attended in Wellington, when 2000 persons protested against the exclusion of Maoris.

“Rugby has a very high place in our national life,” he said. “I was always under the impression that Rugby was a game that developed fine manly qualities. In the past we have always been glad to have Maoris in the All Blacks, and names like Nepia are among the honoured ones of the country. In sporting games players are generally picked on their ability and their fitness, not on their colour. “You and I have condoned discrimination in the past. My guilt is greater than yours, because I have played with the Maoris, but have in the past stood by and watched them being discriminated against because they are brown. “At the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Captain Hobson said as he shook each of the signing Maori chiefs by the hand: ‘We are one people.’ We are still one people. There cannot be different grades of New. Zealanders. It is monstrous to think that one sporting body can besmirch the good name of New Zealand, but that is what is being done at present. “There has been discrimination in the past: it should not happen again.” Only Dissentient The only dissentient voice was that of a man from Geraldine, who said he had the greatest respect for Maoris. He said he was related to Dr. G. J. Potgieter, a South African delegate to the recent meeting of the International Rugby Board. While he could not say what Dr. Potgieter had told him, it was knowm that the South Africans shared with the New Zealanders respect for the Maoris. But the Maoris would be insulted in South Africa and could be the cause of strife. The meeting was derisive of the man’s statement that people in South Africa were trying to bring the native culture up to the stage where the natives could enjoy the privileges enjoyed by the Maoris. Whenever New Zealand sent away goods they had to be labelled, said Mr T. Handisides. The Rugby union had a right to send away a team, and he thought it would do so. But if there were no Maoris in it it should be called by the name of the captain or something else. His motion that the team “be adequately labelled” met with no support. Mr R. H. McDonald, telling the meeting of the support of the trade union movement, commented on the growing awareness of the problem. He added that one newspaper and some civic leaders were now changing their views and meeting the popular opinion. When Mr H. P. Smith, chairman of the City Council’s finance committee, was proposed as chairman of the committee, there were suggestions that the Mayor should be elected and then that the Deputy-Mayor (Mr L. G. Amos) should be appointed. The Mayor declined on the ground that his other duties did not allow him to take office; Mr Amos, a wellknown Rugby League administrator, was not present. “Not a Fair Go *

After the election, Mr Smith said he looked on himself as representing the man in the street, whose view was: “This is not a fair go, and we will not have it.” In the four months he had spent in England last year, there had been less news printed there about New Zealand than had been printed in a “derogatory tone” over the Maori issue recently, Mr Smith said. In the first instance, he did not think the committee should be aggressive and militant, Mr Smith said. It should approach the question firmly but moderately. His hope was that there would be “a round-table discussion at top level” from which there could be a decision acceptable to all. Representative Committee

Officers elected in addition to Mr Smith were:— Vice-chairman, the Rev. A. A. Brash, Mr L. Christie, a city councillor and deputy-chairman of the North Canterbury Hospital Board; secretary, Mr A. M. Eyles,

assistant education officer, Canterbury Museum; executive. Miss Ngaio Marsh, the well-known novelist, Mrs W. Grant, president of the National Council of Women, the Dean of Christchurch (the Very Rev. Martin Sullivan), Mr E. B. E Taylor, a barrister and City Coroner, Mr W. A. Hadlee, accountant and captain of the New Zealand cricket team which toured Britain in 1949, Mr T. Handisides, secretary of the Canterbury Freezing Workers’ Union, Professor L. W. McCaskill, of Canterbury Agricultural College, Mr G. A. Wall, a surgeon, Mr J. G. Leggatt, a solicitor and former New Zealand cricketer, Mr Meates, Dr. Duff, Mr B. Kearns, of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service, Messrs M. Gilbert, B. Thompson, J. H. Broomfield, N. A. Collins, a prominent Anglican Church layman, C. Lewis, M. Manawatu, chairman of the Canterbury Tribal Committee, C. V. Walter, a former New Zealand hockey player, N. Gray and F. G. Briggs. Mayor of Lyttelton.