APOLOGY TO N.Z.

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29182, 18 April 1960, Page 13

APOLOGY TO N.Z.

Remarks On Maoris

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, April 15. “With apologies to many indignant New Zealanders,” the “Daily Telegraph” columnist withdraws the comparison he recently made between New Zealand’s treatment of Maoris and the treatment given to South Africans at Sharpeville. “The other day with reference to South Africa I made very harsh reference to New Zealand's treatment of the indigenous Maori population during the 19th century,” he writes. “The facts as far as I know them are these. During that century the Maori population declined by more than two-thirds from over 150,000 to well under 50.000. The causes of this decline were primarily the diseases, firearms and drink the white man brought with him. “Subsidiary causes were two series of Maori Wars. Both of these originated principally in the land hunger of settlers and in the theft or fraudulent purchase of Maori land.

“The second, according to the New Zealand historian, Dr. J. B. Condliffe, ‘can only be regarded as a desperate struggle by the natives to preserve their interests in the face of what they regarded as pakeha aggression. The fact is unpalatable but inescapable.

“ ‘By 1860 the Maoris in almost every district where they had come into close contact with settlers were convinced that they had no alternative but to defend their lands by war.’ “With a white victory millions of acres of Maori land were confiscated. This ‘punishment’ was imposed with less regard to Justice than to the desirability of the land in question. The innocent suffered as well as (sometimes more than) the guilty. “These wars were conducted with great ruthlessness on both sides but I can find on reflection nothing in them or their aftermath which precisely justifies the comparison I made with Sharpeville,” the columnist says. “I therefore withdraw it with apologies to so many indignant New Zealanders."