RIOT IN SYDNEY DOMAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1928, Page 3

RIOT IN SYDNEY DOMAIN.

PROTESTANT SPEAKER MOBBED. PLATFORM AND FLAG TORN DOWN. RESCUED FROM CROWD BY POLICE POSSE. •1 (From Our Own Correspondent.) SIDNEY, September 20. Resenting the remaks of a speaker of the Protestant Defence Association in the Domain last Sunday, a big crowd rushed his platform, pulled him from it, and were preparing to assault him when police intervened and saved him from their wrath.

The speaker, Mr. W. H. McArthur, is a regular attendant at the Domain each Sunday, where he speaks on aspects of the religious world connected with Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. McArthur, in his speech on Sunday, is said to have made remarks referring to the recent Eucharistic Congress, and these were resented by a big section of the crowd. A number of women who were standing immediately in front of McArthur’s platform, shouted out to him that he ought to be ashamed of himself for making such remarks. Their calls were taken up by the rest of the crowd, and soon McArthur’s voice was drowned in the combined roar of disapproval. Hundreds of additional people were attracted from the stands of other speakers, and in a few minutes a crowd of nearly 2000 surrounded McArthur’s platform. Several policemen immediately formed a cordon round the stand, and this action for a time kept a check on the crowd. However, further remarks by McArthur again aroused the ire of the mob, and they swayed towards the platform. Mass of Wreckage. The police were swept away and a number of men climbed up and dragged McArthur down. The Australian ensign, which was flying from a short staff from the platform, was torn down and the whole platform was soon a mass of wreckage. McArthur, now in the hands of the mob, was receiving rough treatment. He was hurled into the air and caught again by the crowd, and a band of his supporters who tried to rush to his aid were hustled to the outskirts of the crowd, where they were forcibly held in check.

Meanwhile a strong force of police was rushed to the scene, and they commenced to fight their way to the centre of the crowd, where McArthur was being tossed about as if he were a feather. All the time he was being thrown up and down and across from one section of the Crowd to another he kept screaming out and reiterating the statement which caused the crowd to rush his stand in the first place. Finally the police reached the centre of the crowd and rescued McArthur from their clutches. Then commenced a fight to get him out of the crush. Police formed a bodyguard round him, and with drawn batons gradually won a passage through the mob.

It was some time, however, before the police party managed to extricate the speaker from the attentions of the wrathful mob, and finally he was escorted from the Domain tinder a strong guard. The crowd still followed, and he was forced to take refuge in a house in Macquarie Street, where he remained until after dark. On Monday he reiterated his statements, and announced his intention of speaking on the same subject from a new platform in the Doman next Sunday. Police have warned him, but he states that he will bring along his own bodyguard this time.