STUDENTS RAID MEETING

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 August 1929, Page 8

STUDENTS RAID MEETING

■ ———■ —— . MICE AND ST INK-BOMBS. There were, wild scenes at. the annual meeting, in the Caxton Hall, Westminster, of the British Union foi the Abolition of Vivisection. About 200 medical students attended the meeting, and by continued interruption and singing prevented Dr. Hadwen, the chairman, from speaking. Attempts to eject a number of the interrupters resulted in a general struggle. Buckets of water and stinkbombs were thrown from a gallery, live mice were released from boxes and ran about among the audience. Students fought wildly while women in the audience belaboured them with umbrellas, and some of the students had their clothes stripped from their backs and were ejected from the hall. Police arrived at the meeting and helped to remove some of the interrupters. Several of the students received minor injuries, and a number of elderly men and women in the audience were badly shaken. The fire brigade was summoned by some unknown person, and several engines and fire escapes turned out, but ivere not wanted. Some of the

MUL HUIC ILUL OUIIIC ujl Lilt: students were taken to Rochester Row police station. Further attempts were made by the speakers to make themselves heard without avail. An hour and a-half after the meeting had started a young man mounted the platform, and in an astonishing silence said: “We will allow them five minutes to speak, and then we will reply.” The chairman, however, declared the meeting closed. An agitated group on the platform gathered round the chairman, and from the hall came the singing of such rhymes as “Bart’s patients never die, they only fade away.” Amid the din, Dr. Hadwen, the chairman, shouted in the ear of a reporter: “For three years, we have been subjected to a campaign of interruption from students who have continually broken up our meetings. It is a perfect scandal in a land of free speech that we are denied a hearing. Look at that, look at that,” he shouted, as he pointed to a. rough-and-tumble in the middle of the hall, where two

young men were having- a stand-up fight. They fell to the ground and one ■was pulled off the other. Fisticuffs then broke out between a grey-haired man and a youth in the middle of a crowd, tumbling over the wreckage of broken chairs. Women screamed, and one was heard to shout, “For God’s sake, police, come here.” [ One woman was belabouring a young -man with her umbrella, which appeared to be snatched from her and broken. Anonymous Warning. The-students were now “chairing” a commissionaire, and they attempted to chair a policeman, who, however, resisted. One group of students surrounded two others dancing a Scotch reel. “I offered them liberty to speak if they would only be quiet,” said the chairman, making himself heard above

the strains of “Cock Robin,” “but there seems to be no sense in them at all.” Mr. J. B. Carruthers, organiser of the meeting, told a reporter that on Wednesday he received an anonymous e telephone message that students were 1, coming to the meeting in force, and r that they were going to applaud everything so that the meeting would be I- broken up. He had already been to i- Scotland Yard, and, because of the telephone message, went there again. ■ “Captain Leite, one of our stewards, 3 has been kicked in the mouth and two 1. of his teeth were knocked out,” said - one agitated woman, and another held , ■in her hand a small cardboard box. 5 “Here ar© two white mice,” she said, “which a woman friend of mine picked i up among the feet. For all the i students cared they would have been 5 crushed to death.” By this time an ambulance had - come and gone away again without 1 any patients. The students, with - some new plan, rearranged the chairs - in one half of the hall and seated ■ themselves, but the police, headed by : an inspector, walked down the centre .of the hall. One policeman seized by the collar a student who was sit- . ting on the floor and, to his great surprise, this young man was pulled to his feet and carried protesting outside. The police then began to eject the students as a body, one or two of them being captured in spite of struggles. One of the students told a reporter: “Representatives of students in all the London hospitals got here at seven o’clock, well before the meeting. The chairman began by saying - he was pleased to welcome so many, but that if we behaved as hooligans we should bo ejected. At this, what could we do but cheer and say, ‘Come and try it.’ About thirty of us were turned out after terrific fights. We did not bring any white mice. There were some pea-shooters, and water, I believe, was thrown from the fire buckets. Some of our people got wet. During the meeting medical students rang up the fire brigade, and three engines and an ambulance came along, it was arranged two days ago. I think about five of us were taken to the police station. I was one, and here I am again.”

After the students had been ejected an informal meeting was held in the hall, and a number of brief speeches were made. The students demonstrated outside the hall until the police cleared the whole street, and then marched up Whitehall singing songs. They made their way to Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly, where they danced for tlbout half an hour. They then marched. in single file to the Strand and later dispersed. One man, stated to be a student, was taken to Rochester Row station and charged with assault. Another man was taken to Rochester Row but was not detained.