Olympic boycott threat

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34099, 11 March 1976, Page 16

Olympic boycott threat

Sir, — Your editorial on the threatened African boycott of the Montreal Olympics is sound. Anti-apartheid sport protesters are breaking moral dicta that previous centuries held sacrosanct. One such is that the end does not justify the means. Aniother says that two wrongs (do not make a right. But the 'present controversy has ’nothing to do with tradil tional morality. It is a question of strength and influence. All modern disputes must reduce to this. Men can employ paralysing boycotts, hijack planes, make bomb threats, use efficient communications to spread propaganda, smear and ostracise those they dislike. Perhaps this is what “the new morality” means. There are new concepts of “right” and “wrong,” “right” must now mean expedient”; “wrong” sometimes means the old “right.” In the sport politics wrangle, we should do what is expedient for New Zealand. Whether it is right or wrong, in the old i sense, should concern us no more. — Yours, etc.. M. EDWARDS. ■' March 10, 1976.