HYDE PARK VISITED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 278, 24 November 1931, Page 2

HYDE PARK VISITED

BY A NEW ZEALANDER The following description of a visit to Hyde Park, where orators abound on Sundays, is an excerpt from a letter received recently from a New Zealand girl graduate on a visit to the Home country:— “Would you like to hear about my adventure in Hyde Park? It was only seven minutes’ walk from where we were staying, and the others being lazy, I went there alone the first Sunday afternoon we had in London. There were the speakers, not on soap boxes, but on little platforms which were mounted with the aid of stairs. They were packed so closely together that a voice like mine would have been an asset to any speaker. What a queer assortment of speakers!—Salvation Army, Conservatives, Socialists, Communists, Church Army, a Y T oung Men’s Religious Brigade, Boman Catholic Mission, League for the Protection of Public Morals. The religious bodies have rather an unfair advantage because they are allowed to sing, whereas, as the Communist speaker remarked, others would be off to gaol if they sang. “Just imagine a speaker working up to a grand climax and then being drowned by the singing of the Army. The political speakers were not a bit fussy about what they said, or about the language they used. You should have heard them crying down the Army and all it stood for, though quite without malice towards the members of the army. They were quite ready to exchange a greeting with the Army officers, even if they did despise their work.

“What surprised me was the amount of personal reference to past life that all the speakers indulged in. All of them had served more than one sentence in gaol, and there is no doubt that they were largely influenced by their experiences theer after they came out into the world again. Some had betn in for criminal offences; in fact, one boasted openly of the number of times he had been convicted for burglary and the number of times he had not, and said that he would burgle again! One of his audience asked him if he would rob his friends, or comrades, rather, and from the answer I gathered that he would draw the line at that.

“Most of the talking was noisy, incoherent, of a declamatory and not of a rational nature; they felt there was some cause for being dissatisfied with their condition—and is there not? —The man who interested me most was a miner and Communist, and after his fiery outburst I managed to talk to him. His main rheme was the necessity for co-operation among the unemployed, which with him boiled down to a more exact exposition of the real meaning behind I.W.W. —Independent—sufficient remuneration whether in or out of employment; Workers’—Yes, he has no objection to doing a day’s work; World —union of workers all over the world. In the latter connection it was interesting to see how all the Communists and Socialists took a stand for coopera between all nations. Most of them had. been in the war, but they were certain that they would not volunteer if another war broke out. Not they! “Yes, I liked listening in Hydt Park. ’ ’