“NOTHING TO HIDE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 57, 30 May 1927, Page 7

“NOTHING TO HIDE”

COMMUNISTS IN N.Z. NOT IN MOSCOW’S PAY (From Our Resident Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Saturday. “We are not a group of plotters, and we are not in the pay of Moscow,” says Mr. G. G. Kilpatrick, of Wellington, whose name was mentioned in the documents found in the Arcos raid, and who has handed out a statement for publication. He says that the appearance of his name was a surprise, but he suggests that it got there through his correspondence with London in connection with supplies of the Soviet Trade Journal while he was secretary of the Communist Party. “The Communist Party,” he says, “of which I have been a member for the past four years, and of which I am still a member, is a bona-fide working class party based on the irreconcilable struggle between Capital and Labour. What I cannot understand is the air of sensationalism given to the finding of names and addresses of a few New Zealand Communists at this stage, when these same names and addresses were collected by the minions of Sir William Joynson Hicks during the raid on the headquarters of the Communist Party of Great Britain a few months ago, when it was stated in the Press that marv New Zealand addresses had been fo^nd. “As far as the New Zealand activities of the Communist Party are concerned, we know that these are quite well known to the police; indeed, so closely do the local police watch us, that no group of the party, no matter how small, can hold a public meeting without at least two members of the Police Force being present, and we are not troubled in the least with their presence, because we have nothing to hide.”