EMPHATIC DENIAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 August 1938, Page 5

EMPHATIC DENIAL

HAWKE’S BAY WOMAN AND M.P. STATEMENT IN THE HOUSE CHALLENGED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) DANNEVIRKE, August 11. “Over the air from that safe and privileged abode, the House of Representatives, from where great strong men can lash out and verbally persecute innocent womenfolk, knowing that their victims have not the right to retaliate in the ordinary manner, comes another big bluff,” said Mrs M. Livingstone, president of the Southern Hawke’s Bay women’s branch of the National Party, at a combined meeting of women’s branches today. Mrs Livingstone was ' referring to an accusation by the Rev Clyde Carr (Government member for Timaru) to the effect that at a public meeting she had stated that “if the Labour Party was returned to power the streets of somewhere would be flowing with blood, red blood.” “It seems rather a pity that just as we womenfolk are beginning to see clear- daylight ahead, our opponents should have visions that appear only as blood-red,” said Mrs Livingstone. “Surely such accusations should be verified before being broadcast. If not, then we can only accept their value as something created to imply that, because we are working in the interests of the National Party, we have absolutely no sympathy with the labouring sections of the community. Such an inference is so extremely opposite to the position the worker occupies in our party’s policy that I give it an emphatic denial by challenging the reverend gentleman concerned to prove his statement by informing me of where and when I am supposed to have made this remark, and the name of his informant.”