Oath withdrawn

Press, 23 September 1983, Page 3

Oath withdrawn

A retired Christchurch Magistrate, Mr Harold Evans, has withdrawn his oath of allegiance to the Queen because of what he claims is the failure of the Monarch to lead properly the Commonwealth in the areas of peace, war, armaments, and defence.

He has sent letters accordingly to the Minister of Justice, Mr McLay, and the Governor-General, Sir David Beattie.

Mr Evans, who for 12 years was a magistrate in Christchurch and was associate to Mr Justice Northcroft in the Tokyo war criminal trials, takes issue over how the Queen expressed approval and support for the way in which Britain waged the Falklands war.

When he was appointed a stipendiary magistrate in 1965 Mr Evans took the oath of allegiance and the judicial oath. He says that he has become convinced the lead the Queen is giving on war is seriously at variance

with what is her duty.

Mr Evans has been active in the peace movement over the last four years, first in Christchurch and then in Sydney, where he has made his home.

He is strongly critical of the television broadcast the Queen made last Christmas when she “presented herself to the Commonwealth and the world in a spirit of pride and glorification of Britain’s wars of the past.”

He told an audience attending a W.E.A. series of lectures on violence in Christchurch yesterday that it was nothing short of deplorable that the Queen should have lent her exalted status and special influence to the revival and rehabilitation of nationalism.

In his address, “The Christian attitude to violence,” Mr Evans says Her Majesty played down the Falklands war by calling it, euphemistically, a “crisis,” whereas it was a war in which hundreds fought, killed, and wounded one another.