Boycott Alarms Firms

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30530, 27 August 1964, Page 3

Boycott Alarms Firms

(N.Z. Press Association) NELSON, August 26. Takaka businessmen, alarmed at the boycott imposed by farming families of Collingwood, were today reluctantly attempting to intervene in the dispute.

i The businessmen, menaced by the farmers’ boycott, are very much aware that their action could antagonise their I own community at Takaka. I “We are the scapegoats-,” said one today. “We cannot win. Anything we do is bound to be wrong. What a mess to be in. and it’s not even our quarrel.” The Collingwood farmers are refusing to trade in Takaka because the Golden Bay Dairy Company is sending a collection truck into the Collingwood Dairy Company’s territory to pick up cream

from 15 Collingwood suppliers who went over to the Takaka company. The Collingwood farmers say the boycott will not end until the truck stops cominginto the area. Today a special committee of three Takaka businessmen, including a bank manager, Mr J. L- Rees, met directors of the Golden Bay company to “suggest” the directors call a meeting of all shareholders so that the issue might be threshed out. Yesterday at a two-hour meeting almost all Takaka’s businessmen discussed the situation with six.Collingwood farmers. For the farmers, Mr A. G Beardmore and Mr 1. Schaab said the boycott would remain unless the Golden Bay Dairy Company capitulated. Mr Beardmore said today that since yesterday more farmers had cancelled orders for stores, domestic appliances, and Other goods at Takaka. “This thing will not stop over-night,” he said. . “The whole district is split by it. Families are split by it. It is intensely distressing.”