Too late for a second caning

Press, 13 November 1981, Page 4

Too late for a second caning

PA Feilding When Social Credit’s leader, Mr Bruce Beetham, arrived 40 minutes too late for a meeting near Bulls yesterday he was met by the first schoolmaster to cane him. Mr Beetham had planned to talk to students and staff at Flock House farming school, the principal of which is a former Labour Party candidate for Rangitikei and a former All Black coach, Mr J. J. Stewart. But Mr Beetham arrived 40 minutes late, after those he had hoped to speak to had finished morning tea and returned to work. “One damned thing happened after another this morning,” Mr Beetham said, apologising to Mr Stewart. “I hope it was the Labour Party upsetting you,” Mr Stewart replied. Mr Stewart stood against Mr Beetham in the early 1978 Rangitikei by-election that put Mr Beetham in Parliament. But yesterday the two men appeared the best of friends as Mr Beetham recalled that Mr Stewart was “the first person who ever belted my backside with a cane” when he was a pupil at New Plymouth Boys’ High School. Mr Stewart spent an hour showing Mr Beetham part of the 1200 ha Flock House complex, a Ministry of Agriculture farm training school which used to be a homestead. Mr Beetham met students and workers in the school’s workshops, inspected its pool, gymnasium, bar, and new living quarters.