Protesters Among The Welcomers
(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, February 7. Cabinet Ministers, diplomats, demonstrators, a Maori concert party, family friends, spectators and a grandchild welcomed home the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) today on his arrival at Wellington Airport from a fiveweek tour of Europe, India, and Pakistan.
It was the friendliest welcome Mr Holyoake has received in recent years after an overseas tour, and was in marked contrast to the sour welcome last year when antiVietnam demonstrators rushed his car as it was leaving Wellington Airport. The Prime Minister, showing no sign of strain after his extensive tour, stepped off his aircraft to be welcomed by the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Marshall) and Mrs Marshall, and the chanting of a Maori welcome from a concert party.
Mr Holyoake’s daughter and son-in-law, Mr and Mrs K. Comber, with their daughter, Melanie, aged one, were also in the welcoming party. After an affectionate welcome from his grandchild, the Prime Minister, smiling broadly, rubbed noses with the Maoris.
The carnival atmosphere was heightened by American tourists off the same aircraft as the Prime Minister who lined the tarmac to take
photographs of the concert party and Mr and Mrs Holyoake. Inside the terminal building members of the diplomatic corps, including the American Ambassador (Mr J. F. Henning), Cabinet Ministers and family friends greeted the Prime Minister and Mrs Holyoake, Waiting outside the terminal building at the entrance to the airport was a small group of demonstrators with anti-Vietnam war slogans who booed the smiling Prime Minister as he drove past to the city. The leader of the 30-odd demonstrators, Mr K. J. Gough, chairman of the Committee on Vietnam, told Reporters that they were not demonstrating against any particular statement the Prime Minister had made overseas but against his foreign policies in general. “Our policy is to demonstrate wherever the Prime Minister is,” Mr Gough said.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31908, 8 February 1969, Page 1
Word Count
314Protesters Among The Welcomers Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31908, 8 February 1969, Page 1
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