Hopes held against conference ban

Press, 22 August 1979, Page 20

Hopes held against conference ban

The organisers of an inter, national service club conference in Christchurch next month hope -that a Canterbury Trades Council service ban will not eventuate.

Eighty South Africans and 15 Rhodesians are expected at the World Council ol Young Men’s Service Clubs’ conference at the Town Hall, which will begin on September 24.

A meeting of the Trades Council last week decided to withdraw all services from the Town Hall if delegates from South Africa and Rhodesia attended.

“We don’t want to disrupt the conference,” said the president of the Trades Council (Mr W. R. Cameron). “I hope the organisers will have more sense than to invite them at this very delicate time.”

Mr Cameron said that trade unions had no option but to use whatever action was necessary to see that Nev.' Zealand abided by international decisions. The chairman of the conference organising committee (Mr N. C. Bullock), said that although the South Africans and Rhodesians would attend the conference, they were not invited to it“specifically”

by New Zealand service clubs. “Everyone who is a member of kindred associations throughout the world is entitled to come. New Zealand has not sent out specific invitations to anybody,” he said. It would be the first time the conference had been held in New Zealand, said Mr Bullock. As far as he knew, there had never been any “trouble” at any previous conference. Last year’s conference was held in Kenya, and there had been “no problems whatsoever.” Members of the Round Table in South Africa were multi-racial, and he believed that that was also the case in Rhodesia. He did not know from the names whether the delegates were white or black, but there were delegates coming from black countries, “right through central Africa,” he said. More discussions would be held with the Trades Council. Mr Bullock said he was “certainly hopeful” that an agreement would be reached about the servicing of the conference. The Halt All Racist Tours organisation has said that it intends to organise a demonstration to coincide with the

opening of the conference. It will also organise more protests while the convention is being held if the South Africans and Rhodesian delegates attend. The area organiser of H.A.R.T. (Ms Pauline McKay) said yesterday that a H.A.R.T. deputation which met the organisers of the conference in July had got nowhere. She said that in South Africa some service clubs allowed a few wealthy blacks to belong to their clubs. But that did nothing to break down the fundamental strucures of apartheid.