All Black Issue Not Settled

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32213, 4 February 1970, Page 10

All Black Issue Not Settled

Almost two years after the New Zealand Rugby Union had accepted an invitation to send an All Black team to South Africa, it was still not known if Maori players would be acceptable in the Republic and, if so, on what terms, the vicechairman of the Christchurch Citizens’ Association for Racial Equality (Mr R. H. T. Thompson) said in a written statement.

“If Maori players are acceptable in South Africa, must they be limited in number to one or two, or must they be European in appearance and able to pass as white?” he asked.

If the present situation was

uncertain as a result of pressures at home and abroad, recent statements made during ti»e verlighte-verkrampte debate shed new light on the South African Rugby Board's invitation to New Zealand, Mr Thompson asserted. “Most recently, there is Dr Hertzog’s statement that Mr Vorster assured 13 Nationalist members of Parliament that Maori Rugby players would not be allowed into South Africa with the All Black team, and that nine had gone so far as to make sworn statements to this effect,” he went on. “It is clear that at the time the New Zealand Rugby Union accepted the South African Rugby Board’s invitation to tour South Africa this year, the invitation did not carry with it an assurance from the South African Government that Maori players would be acceptable in the Republic as members of an All Black team.” Two questions required an answer, Mr Thompson said. The Prime Minister of South Africa had said that the invitation was issued after Dr D. Craven had asked him how it should be worded, and that the wording was precisely the same as that of previous invitations, which were for tours from which Maori players were openly excluded.

“In May of last year, Mr T. C. Morrison, the immediate past-president of the New Zealand union, contrasted the invitation to tour in 1967 with what he called ‘an amended invitation’ to tour in 1970.

“If, as Mr Vorster said, the wording of both invitations was precisely the same, what did Mr Morrison mean when he described the invitation for the 1970 tour as ‘amended’?” Mr Thompson asked.

In September of last year Mr Morrison. said that the Rugby Union had withheld publication of the invitation until he had telephoned Dr Craven to find out if Maori

players would be “eligible” for selection,” Mr Thompson said.

“In July and in August, 1968, Mr Morrison, as chairman of the New Zealand union, was twice asked whether his organisation had re ceived an explicit assurance from the South African Rugby Board that all Maoris selected for the tour would be welcome in the Republic. He replied: ‘l, personally, feel that it would be downright bad manners and ignorance, and that it would be an insulting reflection on the Maori race to ask whether they, the Maoris, would be welcome in the Republic as members of a fully-represen-tative New Zealand Rugby team’,” Mr Thompson said. “In view of his telephone conversation with Dr Craven, why did Mr Morrison find it necessary in August, 1968, to pretend that the requested assurance was evidence of bad manners, ignorance and an insult to the Maori people?”