ANTI-VIVISECTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20331, 12 August 1929, Page 11

ANTI-VIVISECTION.

STUDENTS RAID MEETING*

SCENES OF WILD RIOT.

MICE AND ' STINK-BOMBS. There were wild scenrs at the annual meeting, in the Caxton. Hall, Westminster, of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. About 200 medical students attended (lie 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 stink-bombs were thrown from a gallery, live mice were teleased 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 tho students received minor injuries, and a number of elderly men and women in the audience were badly shaken.

Thto fire brigade was summoned by some unknown person, and several engines and fire escapes turned out, but were not wanted. Some of the students were taken to Rochester .Row police station. A Stand-up Fight. 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 cn the platform gathered round the chairman, and from the hall came tho singing of such rhymes as "Bart's patients never die, they only fade away." Amid the din, Dr. Hadwen, the chairman. shouted in the car of a reporter: "For three years we have been subjected to a campaign of interruption from students who have continually broken up cur 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 new "chairing" a commissionaire, and they attempted to chair a policeman, who, however, resisted. One croup of students surrounded two others dancing; a Scotch reel.

"I offered them liberty to speak i? 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 (elsphone message that students were coming to the meeting in force, and that they were going to applaud everything so that the meeting would be broken up. He had already been to Scotland Yard, and. because of the telephone message, went there azain.

"'Captain Leite, one of our stewards, has been kicked in the mouth and two of his teeth were knocked out," said one agitated woman, and another held in her hand a small cardboard box. "Here arc two white mice," she said, "which a woman friend of mine picked up among the feet. For all the students cared they would have been crushed to death.''

By this time an ambulance had come and" gone away again without, any patients. The students, with some newplan. rearranged the chairs in one half of the hall and sealed 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 sitting on the floor and, to his great surprise, this young man was pulled to his feet and carried protesting outside. Chairman's Challenge. The police then began to eject the students as a body, one: or two of thcra being captured in spite of straggles. 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 wo behaved as hooligans -we should bo ejected. At this, what could be 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 peashooters, and water. I believe, was thrown from the'»firc 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 lam 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, arid then marched up Whitehall singing songs. They made their way to Trafalgar Square anrl Piccadilly, where they danced for about half an hour. Ihcv then marched in single file to the Strand and later dispersed. One man, stated to be a student, was taken to Rochester How police station and charged with assault. Another man was taken to Rochester How but was not detained.