FURTHER CHALLENGE BY MRS. STONE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 271, 12 August 1938, Page 13

FURTHER CHALLENGE BY MRS. STONE

Letter To Hon. R. Semple

PRIVILEGE COULD BE WAIVED

A further challenge to the Hon. R. Semple to waive his Parliamentary privilege so that he may face an action for slander based on his attack in the House of Representatives on Mrs. It. L. Stone is contained in a letter forwarded by Mrs. Stone to Mr. Semple last night. She asks if the Minister is afraid of the result of a court action and offers to give any damages awarded against him to the Society for the Protection of Women and Children. The letter, which is dated August 11. is as follows:- —

Dear Sir, —I have consulted a lawyer as suggested by you. He tells me that there is nothing to prevent you agreeing to waive your Parliamentary privilege in a suit for slander. . He also says that if yon find any ditflculty a bout'that, all you need do is to repeat the words complained ot upon a public platform. . From your place of shelter m the House you bravely said that you would repeat them on every platform in New Zealand. Since you returned to Wellington you hav spoken at Ngaio and the Hutt without doing so, and last night you refused to answer a question relating to the matter. Although you 1 ve tints run away from both your promise and your charge, you now make matters worse bv refusing to apologise and by seeking to justify your attack. _ Surely you can plead “justification in a court of law if you really feel that you were justified! Are you afraid of the court’s decision? Or is it that you do not went me to have any money from you? Will it help you if I agree to pay any dar ges awarded against you to the Society for the Protection of Women and Children? The justification for what I said is contained in a boo': o.i Socialism with a preface bv A. J. Balfour, which cites as authorities Robert Bletchford, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Mrs. Snowden, and others. All I did was to quote what those people have said about the marriage tie under Socialism. That is my justification; but apparently you are not prepared to let any court adjudicate on the justification for vour attack on me. In my earlier letter I asked you to show the public that Parliament has not become a castle for cowards. What have you shown them? —Yours faithfUlly’(Signed) (Mrs.) E. L. STONE.

M.P. CHALLENGED

Remarks About Hawke’s Bay Woman

Dominion Special Service.

Damievirko, August 11. “Over the air from that safe and privileged abode, the House of Representatives, from where great strong men can lash out an'd verbally persecute innocent womenfolk, knowing that their victims have not the right to retaliate in the ordinary manner, comes another big bluff,” said Mrs. M. Livingstone, president of the Southern Hawke’s Bay women’s branch of the National Party, at a combined meeting of women’s branches to-day. Mrs. Livingstone was referring to an accusation by the Rev. Clyde Carr (Government member for Timaru) to the effect that at a public meeting she had stated that “if the Labour Party was returned to power the streets of somewhere would be flowing with blood, red- blood.” “It seems rather a pity that just as we womenfolk are beginning to see clear daylight ahead our opponents should have vsiions that appear only as blood-red,” said Mrs. Livingstone. “Surely such accusations should be verified before being broadcast. If not, then we can only accept their value as something created to imply that, because we are working in the interests of the National Party, we have absolutely no sympathy with the labouring sections of the community. Such an inference is so extremely opposite to the position the worker occupies in our party’s policy that I give it an emphatic denial by challenging the reverend gentleman concerned to prove his statement by informing me of where and when I am supposed to have made this remark, and the name of his informant.” I