Disruptions last resort

Press, 7 December 1988, Page 84

Disruptions last resort

PA Wellington The anti-apartheid organisation, Hart, will disrupt the matches England is to play on a proposed tour to New Zealand only as a last resort.

“There are other avenues to protest through at the moment,” a Hart spokesman, Dick Cuthbert, said yesterday. “People can mend their ways and it’s up to the England players to sign statements that they won’t have any more contacts 'with South Africa.

“We have written to the New Zealand Cricket Council and the Pakistan

board not to play with this team. We will only disrupt matches as a last resort.”

Hart will not be singling out the England captain, Graham Gooch and the top order batsman, Allan Lamb.

“The whole issue is to protest against all those players with such contacts, not just one or two of them," Mr Cuthbert said.

The organisation was angry with particularly three players in the party — Tim Robinson, Graham Dilley and John Emburey — who toured New Zealand last summer.

“They apparently didn’t

sign statements and that’s why they are on the U.N. blacklist. That makes us doubly angry,” Mr Cuthbert said.

Neither the New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games Association nor the Government will comment on the issue until it is decided whether England is to tour or not.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Russell Marshall, would not be commenting on the tour, a spokesman for his office said, although he had discussed the tour with the N.Z.C.C. chairman, Barry Paterson.