127 Groups Sign Protest Letter

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30592, 7 November 1964, Page 16

127 Groups Sign Protest Letter

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 6. One hundred and twenty-seven Auckland organisations have signed an open letter of protest to President de Gaulle against the proposed French nuclear tests in the Pacific.

The organisations include 34 church representative groups, 11 borough and county councils, 13 trade unions, 27 educational bodies, and 41 general groups, including the Labour Party, women’s and sporting organisations. Several groups signed the letter on a national basis. They are the Anglican. Presbyterian, Methodist, Society of Friends, Congregational Union and New Zealand Society of Unitarians groups. One of the earliest Auckland signatories was the Bishop of Auckland (the Rt. Rev. E. A. Gowing). Since then nine Anglican bishops meeting at Napier authorised the Archbishop and Primate of New Zealand (the Most Rev. N. A. Lesser) to sign on behalf of the church. The letter reads: “The right to conduct these tests in the name of national independence, strength and prestige, if claimed by every nation on earth, can lead only to the destruction of all. “We beg France to turn away from the dangerous policy followed in testing nuclear weapons, to withdraw this threat from the Pacific Ocean, and to exercise with us the duty of civilised nations to protest for the island peoples and the health of future generations.”