Rugby Tour Demonstrators Admit Trespass Charges

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29233, 17 June 1960, Page 6

Rugby Tour Demonstrators Admit Trespass Charges

(Neto Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, June 16. Two students and a man and his wife who broke through the public barriers at Whenuapai airport the day the New Zealand Rugby team left for South Africa all admitted charges of trespassing on the airport before Mr J. W. Kealy, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court at Auckland today. The Magistrate said that while he did not intend to impose the stigma of convictions, he was concerned to impose a penalty that would deter others from actions which might have caused grave danger. He said he was paying the defendants the compliment of believing they acted from high motives in their protest but, he said, their intrusion as the aircraft was taking off could have been serious and the Court had a clear duty to frown on such conduct. The students were Allan Bruce Thorpe, aged 22, and Robert Cater, aged 23, and the other defendants were George Tipman, aged 34, salesman, and his wife, Eunice Tipman. aged 14. Thorpe was further charged with disorderly behaviour and Cater with obstructing the police. Both pleaded not guilty to these ges. The Court adjourned these charges along with all the trespass charges for three months to be dismissed then conditional on continued good behaviour and conditional on Thorpe paying £25 and the others £lO each towards the costs of the prosecution.

The police prosecutor CMr G. A. Dallow) said between 2000 and 3000 people were at Whenuapai on May 10, the day the team left

New Zealand and as the aircraft taxied to the runway and started on its take-off run Thorpe ran through a gate in the barrier and out towards the tarmac with the others following. Thorpe ran towards the aircraft but wisely stopped short of it. Thorpe later told the police he was registering his protest and he wanted to delay the departure of the team. He had nothing against the team itself. Cater approached the police and asked to be arrested too, as he had organised the demonstration and had told Thorpe when to rush out. Cater was asked to leave four times and was Anally removed bodily from the police office. The Magistrate said that he thought the very great majority of New Zealanders would sympathise with the general view that racial discrimination was abhorrent to this country and that many good people would not be disposed to quarrel with the intention of the demonstrators. Freedom of speech and of action were valued under British law as fundamental in our conception of civilisation but good order and good government were also fundamental needs. These liberties quite properly had to be limited where they might involve a breach of the laws or a breach of the peace.

America is big in time, too. In the small countries the clocks strike all together—all one hour. With us it is still deep night at San Francisco, and dark still on the High Plains, and only barely gray on Lake Michigan, when the sun comes up at Marblehead. -Archibald MacLeish.