Wizard put out

Press, 9 March 1978, Page 1

Wizard put out

Defiance of a Christchurch City Council ruling that public speaking would not be allowed at Speakers’ Corner in Cathedral Square, yesterday lunchtime has resulted in the possibility of. the Wizard’s facing prosecution. "Speakers’ Comer is a

tradition in Christchurch that I started and that I keep going,” the Wizard said yesterday, after his brush with the law during the International Women’s Day meeting in the Square. “The City Council did not give Speakers’ Corner to Christchurch, and it

cannot take it away either,” he said, referring to a public notice in "The Press” yesterday saying that Speakers’ Comer would be temporarily closed to public speaking between noon and 2 p.m. The Wizard said that when he placed his podium in his customary place at Speakers’ Comer, a policeman told him he would be charged with speaking there when he should not be. “This is the third time the council has closed off Speakers” Corner to the public and allowed certain groups to use microphones and loudhailers in the Square," he said. “First it was the evangelical Christians, then it was the trade unionists, and now it is the liberationists. I suspect the council is biased and that some of its members support such groups.” The Wizard said that after the police had told him he would be charged with speaking during the temporary closing of Speakers’ Comer, he had moved off to the Cathedral grounds to address his followers. “Then a police officer came up to me and said I was ‘inciting disorder’ and asked me to desist,” the Wizard said. “In 10 years of public speaking I have been cooling down frenzied crowds with my jokes, not inciting disorder.” The Wizard said he hoped the police would carry out the threat of prosecution. "I would like to be able to argue this one out in court,” he said.