Barber Charged With Possession Of Subversive Papers

Northern Advocate, 13 September 1940, Page 7

Barber Charged With Possession Of Subversive Papers

[Per press Association. — Copyright 1 WELLINGTON, This Day.

A charge of being in possession, on August 31, of 127 copies of a pamphlet with a view to facilitating the publication of a subversive statement, was made in the Police Court yesterday against James Kelman, aged 37, a barber employed at the Wellington railway station. The pamphlet contained an attack on three Ministers of the Crown in connection with the deportation of a Communist.

The magistrate (Mr J. L. Stout) reserved his decision.

Senior-Detective Doyle said that as the result of complaints received a detective interviewed the accused, who was the sole occupier of a bach at the back of a house.

Amazement Expressed

There the detective found a fairly extensive collection of books from the Left Book Club. The accused told the detective he was a member of the Esperanto Society.

A suitcase was found to contain Esperanto correspondence and a bundle cf pamphlets, which were the subject of the charge. Kelman expressed great amazement at these, continued witness, saying that he had never seen them before. They were not in the case when he looked in it a few days before. In the breast pocket of a coat there was a letter from the organiser of the Wellington branch of the Communist Party. In his reference to this the accused said: “That's a different matter: that’s a different story.”

Accused’s Plea

Mr Doyle indicated that similar pamphlets had been posted throughout the city. Each pamphlet stated it was issued by the national committee of the Peace and Anti-Conscrip-tion Council. The police had stopped meetings of that body, and on the surface it had been defunct so far as the police knew. The defending counsel said accused, with several hundred others, who attended the meeting of the Peace and Anti-Conscription Council at the Trades Hall, signed on as members. Members were asked to distribute notices of meetings, and such notices were dumped regularly in accused’s rocm, the door of which was always unlocked. He had no reason to believe there was anything in the room when the police searched it.