Speakers Arrested Alter Warning Ignored

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 4, 5 January 1940, Page 10

Speakers Arrested Alter Warning Ignored

(By Telegraph—Press Association) WANGANUI, Jan. 3. Ignoring a warning by the police to move on, two Wellington speakers were taken to the police station for interrogation this afternoon. The men arrested were A. C. Barrington, Wellington, Dominion secretary of the Workers’ Education Association, and H. G. Lyttle, of Wellington. It is stated that at present it is the intention of the police only to charge Barrington with a breach of the by-laws in obstructing a thoroughfare in Ridgway street. There were several threatening cries from the crowd as the address progressed. After some time a constable approached the speaker and said: “Are you moving along or are you coming in”. The speaker’s reply could not be distinguished, but he was taken in charge. The other young man immediately stood up on a box and said, “This is the freedom which 1 we are against.” A constable here interrupted, and the pair debated for a few moments. The would-be speaker was immediately persuaded to go along to Queen’s Park. After the arrest, the Rev. J. F. Martin, of the Methodist Church, Aramoho, who had previously said to the crowd that he was “Proud to call these men his friends,” took over the speaking. The crowd gave him a more generous hearing, though there were still interjections. Mr Martin was told to move along by a plain-clothes constable and complied. At the station the two men arrested were interviewed by Detective J. Murray and Detective H. A. Hay and were then allowed to leave the station. They returned to Ridgway street, and in the presence of members of the police force the young man once more mounted the soapbox.