Disturbed an Election Meeting

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7268, 22 September 1933, Page 8

Disturbed an Election Meeting

PERSISTENT INTERJECTOR CONVICTED 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 Shacklock, who had frequently interjected and had been escorted from the hall, was to-day charged with using insulting language and disturbing a public meeting. Defendant, on the charge of disturbing the meeting, was convicted and ordered to pay costs. The second

charge, of having used insulting language, was dismissed. The Magistrate (Mr. E. D. Mosley) declined to determine the controversial question raised at the meeting as to whether tho Coalition had a mandate to extend the life of Parliament. Counsel for the defence, Mr. Thomas, said: “If Mr. Coates 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: Tho point I want to get at is this, that Mr. Coates had no man-, date.

The Magistrate: How are you going to prove it? Mr. Thomas: You know, and I know, and everyone in this Court knows, that what he said was untrue.

The Magistrate: I do not know anything about it. Mr. Thomas: There is not a s-mgie man in this Court who ever heard of a mandate till Mr. Coates brought it up.

The Magistrate: I cannot help it. I do not know whether there was 1 a mandate.

Mr. Thomas: That is what I want to 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.