ANZAC DAY LAW

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 116, 18 May 1944, Page 6

ANZAC DAY LAW

INTERESTING COMMENT "This is the first prosecution of its kind I have met, and it is certainly unusual," said Mr. W. C. Harley, ,S.M., at Lower Hutt yesterday, when eight carpenters and an employing builder were prosecuted for working at their trade in view of the public on Anzac Day, and another builder was prosecuted for aiding and abetting. "It is a law which has been carried down from ancient ecclesiastic law through English law to our own legal code and very definitely not in accord with the spirit- of the times," said Mr. Harley. "It goes much further than the ecclesiastical law in that it makes a law against certain work on a day other than a Sunday. These men would have been immune from the law if they had laid down their saws and taken up spades, and I suppose most of us in this court today worked in their gardens, cut their lawns, or chopped wood on Anzac Day. "As the law stands I shall have to enter a conviction, and until someone takes action to remove it from the Statute Book the anomaly must stand." - Mr. Harley said he agreed with the contention of counsel that it was little wonder that, considering the amount of compulsory defence work performed on Sunday, the men had overlooked the law regarding Anzac Day. Each of the defendants was fined ss, without costs.