High Commissioner’s Pleasant Task

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22698, 24 July 1948, Page 4

High Commissioner’s Pleasant Task

The picture is of particular interest to people of the East Coast, for the parcels being distributed are part of a food consignment—one of many—for which they have provided the funds.

The dispatch was made from New Zealand late last year and comprised 4] tons of food assembled on behalf of the East Coast Food-for-Britain Committee by Messrs. Murray, Roberts and Company, Limited, through the firm’s Gisborne branch. The value represented by the consignment is £SOO, and each individual parcel contains one tin of meat, one of dripping, one of condensed milk, one of marmalade and 21b, of a cereal, together with a packet of soap-flakes and two tablets of soap. The photograph was received recently by the Rev. W. G. Bird, vicar of Waipiro Bay and honorary organiser of the East Coast Food - for - Britain Committee, direct from London by air-mail. It is one of a series furnished to the United Kingdom press by the Ministry of Food, accompanied by a precis of a speech made by Mr. Jordan on the occasion of the distribution.

In his speech Mr. Jordan emphasised that the food was sent by the people of the East Coast of New Zealand’s North Island not as charity but in token of their gratitude and admiration for the way in which people of Great Britain had endured the war years. New Zealand as a whole had sent 1,000,000 parcels to Britain in 1946, 1,250.000 in 1947, and hoped to send even more this year. On behalf of the people of Kensington, the Mayor, SquadronLeader J. H. Huxley, D.F.C.. thanked Mr. Jordan for his attendance at the distribution and asked him to accord to the senders in New Zealand the hearty thanks of Kensington people for the wonderful gifts and for the sentiments the gifts expressed. The Mayor and Mayoress of Kensington Royal Borough are to be seen in the photograph with Mr. Jordan and an old-age pensioner who was one of the recipients of parcels.