N.Z. ‘On Wrong Side’ In Race-Sport Issue

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31676, 11 May 1968, Page 14

N.Z. ‘On Wrong Side’ In Race-Sport Issue

“In the sports arena the division between black and white is becoming particularly apparent with South Africa and her friends (among whom must be numbered Australia and New Zealand) on one side and the rest of the world on the other. I suggest we are on the wrong side,” said Mr R. H. Thompson, reader in sociology at the University of Canterbury, on his return yesterday from leave in Britain and the United States.

Mr Thompson said he went overseas to continue his 10-year-old and somewhat lonely research on racial issues and sport The Olympic controversy sprang up and showed this to be an exceedingly topical matter of increasingly international public concern, and also a touehy social and political issue. “One thing is certain—that New Zealand’s continued reciprocal sports tours with South Africa will be watched with increasing interest bv the rest of the world,” Mr Thompson said. “A few years ago these largely interested only sports enthusiasts; this is no longer so. “It seems to me that New Zealand is not well served in this sphere by its sports administrators. They seem anxious to co-operate with South Africa under conditions acceptable to the South African Government without apparent knowledge of what they are involving themselves in,” he said. “The case of African and Asian countries in the Olympic issue was constitutionally and morally unchallengeable. Strongly supporting those countries were Soviet Russia and the Communist bloc. The Western world, by and large (except France and Italy), supported South Africa. “I repeat that we are on the wrong side and that New

Zealand should debate this matter because its international, political, and racial implications are very serious,” said Mr Thompson. Issues formerly largely domestic to New Zealand were now coming under the world scrutiny of national leaders, civil rights workers, and academic sociologists.