S.P.U.C. banned at women’s festival

Press, 10 March 1984, Page 1

S.P.U.C. banned at women’s festival

The organisers of today’s International Women’s Day Festival in Hagley Park have banned the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child from the festival because the society approached the police about it. S.P.U.C. yesterday received a letter from the festival’s steering committee saying that the society had “forfeited the right” to have a stall at the festival, because it had notified the Colice that the festival was eing held, and that it was to have a stall there.

“We feel you have acted with insensitivity, and contrary to the spirit of International Women’s Day,” the unsigned letter said. The $lO site fee was returned to the society. A spokeswoman for

S.P.U.C., Mrs Patricia Batchelor, said it was the society’s policy, and an act of courtesy, to notify the police of any public event it was staging or would be represented at. She said the police did not know the festival was being held.

The convener of the festival organising committee, Mrs Judy Lea, said that there was no need for S.P.U.C. to tell the police, and that the committee was concerned that S.P.U.C. had “demanded information through the police.” When asked what information S.P.U.C. had sought, Mrs Lea said the police had been in touch with her and asked her about the festival and its organisers — information, she said, that had been included in promotional

material sent to S.P.U.C. Mrs Lea said she thought the society “must have been after something.” When told why S.P.U.C. had said it had notified the police, Mrs Lea said: “That’s their story.” Mrs Batchelor said that the forfeiture of S.P.U.C.’s rights to take part in the festival was considered to be “an act of discrimination without any grounds.”

Members of S.P.U.C. were concerned that the festival committee’s objections were “just a ploy to get us out of the festival.”