MR MASSEY’S CHRISTCHURCH MEETING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18736, 14 December 1922, Page 9

MR MASSEY’S CHRISTCHURCH MEETING.

STATEMENT BY THE POLICE. (Pub United Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, December 13. With regard to Superintendent Warner’s statement to the Fire Board respecting Mr Massey’s meeting at the Theatre Royal the consensus of opinion among officials present on the occasion is that the course taken to keep the crowds back was the only sensible and safe one to adopt. It is stoutly denied by the police that the audience were “barred and bolted up’’ as asserted by the Fire Brigade superintendent, one official stating that the gates could have been thrown open at a minute’s notice. The official said that had not the police shut the gateways, swarms of excited spectators would have bundled headlong up the passage and the alleyways, and in the event of any fire alarm being given as a joke or in earnest there would have beeri a, frightful stampede with probably disastrous results. ‘‘We had to take some measures to keep the crowds back. When the building was full w T e shut the gates, but they could have been thrown open to let the audience but at a moment’s notice.”