CIVIL RIGHTS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 50, 20 February 1945, Page 3

CIVIL RIGHTS

WHAT THEY INVOLVE ATTITUDE OF RETURNED SERVICEMEN There have been some confused ideas concerning" the definition of the term "civil rights" and what the deprivation of those rights actually entails says "Review," the official organ of the Returned Services' Association. From a legal point of view the expression "civil rights" has an indefinite meaning and it may be taken for granted that the interpretation intended by the N.Z.R.S.A., when urging upon the Government to deprive military defaulters ot their civil rights for a period of 10 years was no more and no less than the interpretation given to the term in tlie Expeditionary Forces Amendment Act 1918 when the Government of the day introduced similar provisions. Sub-section 1 of Section 13 ol that Act reads: "All military defaulters are hereby deprived of civil rights for a period of ten years from the passing of. this Act." Sub section 2 amplifies the intention of the preceding Sub-section by providing that: "every man so| deprived of civil rights shall be in- j capable (a) of being appointed to or of continuing to hold any office or employment in the services of the Crown or any .local or other Public Authority; (b) of being elect, j ed or appointed or of continuing to hold office as a member of the! House of Parliament or as a member of any local or Public Authority; (c) of being enrolled as an elector or voting at any election of member or members of either House of Parliament or of a member or members of any local oiv other Public Authority." Those are the provisions that the N.Z.R.S.A. considers should be made to npply to military defaulters of the present war. Assuming that everyone who has served in the. armed forces had refused such service and the country had come under enemy occupation, rot one of us (with the possible exception of "quislings") would enjoy the democratic privileges set out in Sub-section 2. Can it be regarded as a hardship to deprive defaulters of enjoying privileges that, they did not consider worth lighting for? Indeed this Journal would go as far as to say that in the ranks of these defaulters, if left at large, ( a victorious invader would have found potential "quislings" and saboteurs!