HART and Veteran Games

Press, 12 January 1981, Page 14

HART and Veteran Games

Sir, — Your editorial, “HART smears itself,” January 9, fails to substantiate your heading. Your paper reported that violence was initiated by games veterans. Among veterans one finds Gideon Tait, former chief police superintendent and president of New Zealand Veterans Association. “They might get lynched if they come back,” sounds to me neither “jocular” nor befitting a New Zealand president, nor a former policeman. Nothing warranted such Ku. Klux Klan violence even in thought. I believe that police took the part of violent veterans, not the peaceful protesters. The “essentially hysterical and overemotional" qualities you attribute to HART apply more accurately to talk of lynching. The Government in recent controversies has not shown itself “amenable’’ to “facts” or “logic.” HART is itself reacting, to institutionalised violence and failure of the games authorities to exclude South African competitors whose duplicity' seems authenticated. Alienating support is not desirable but sometimes unavoidable to achieve social change. January 9, 1981.

Sir, — Naughty, naughty HART. How dare it continue to use the tactics that have kept the apartheid sport issue in the news for the past 10 years. HART should behave itself, and cease all these "provoking” distracting and alienating actions. If HART does, thousands of secret admirers including “The Press” will come out and support it — and pigs will fly.— Yours, etc., 808 CONSEDINE. January 9, 1981.