BY-ELECTION ECHO

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 252, 21 September 1933, Page 2

BY-ELECTION ECHO

MAN IN COURT. Per Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, Sept. 21. As a sequel to a rowdy political meeting when Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates spoke at Cashmere Hills on September 11, Francis Oakleigh Shaddock, who had frequently interjected and had been escorted from the hall, was to-day charged with using insulting language and disturbing a public meeting. The Magistrate, Mr E. D. Mosley, convicted defendant and ordered him to pay the costs. ’lhe Magistrate declined to determine the controversial question raised at the meeting as to whether the Coalition had a mandate to extend the life of Parliament. Counsel for the defence, Mr Thomas, said: “If Mr Goa.tes makes a statement from a public platform that is a deliberate untruth it cannot be held to be insulting if he is told that he is a liar.” The Magistrate remarked that defendant might have used the term “perverter of the truth.” Mr Thomas: The point I wa.nt to get at is this, that Mr Coates had no mandate. The Magistrate: How are you going to prove it? Mr Thomas: You know, and 1 know, and everyone in this Courtknows that what he said was untrue. The’Magistrate: I do not know anything about it. . Mr Thomas: There is not a single man in this Court who ever heard of a mandate till Mr Coates brought it up. , , The Magistrate: I cannot lieln it. I do not know whether there was a mandate. Mr Thomas: That is what I want t-o get at. The Magistrate: You cannot get it from the witness (the chairman of the meeting) with my consent. The Magistrate, in giving his decision, said the defendant was a temperamental man and excitable, and he went beyond the bounds of reason. To interrupt a public meeting was not British fair play.