RELEASE APPEAL

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 20, 24 July 1945, Page 6

RELEASE APPEAL

WATERSIDERS' SUPPORT O.C. PALMERSTON N., This Day. When Robert William Finall, of Wellington, stevedore and freezing worker employed by the Wellington Waterside Commission, presented an application for release on parole from military detention, before Mr. W. H. Woodward, No. 2 Revision Authority, yesterday, he was supported by the Wellington Watersiders' Union.

Mr. R. J. O'Donnell, president of the union, said decision to support the appeal was made at a meeting attended by about 1000 ; members. Finall's views on war were well known to members of the union. He had been one of about a dozen out of some 800 men engaged to load scrap iron for Japan who had refused to do the work, and his action had led eventually to the "drying up" of this source of supply of raw material for the Japanese war effort. ■•*.-•

Answering Mr. J. A. Duffy, Crown representative, Finall said that had his original appeal been allowed he would have gone back to the wharf and loaded food for the troops, as he would have been doing a service to them personally. He did not believe in starving men. Appellant said he would make a friendly approach ■to an invading army and believed such action would have a demoralising effect on them. He denied refusing to fight because of a grudge against the present social system. Away back in 1934 when in Murchison he had written to the Press against war.

Decision was reserved.