DISTURBERS FINED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1939, Page 6

DISTURBERS FINED

EPISODE AT CHRISTCHURCH MEETING. CONTENTIONS BY COUNSEL. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. “Something more than an interjection is needed to create a disturbance at a political meeting.” said Mr. K. G. Archer, in the Magistrate’s Court this morning, when defending two men charged with disturbing a public meeting on May 25. He entered pleas of guilty. . The defendants, John McGuire, labourer, and Henry Richard Woodham, labourer, were each fined 30s and costs by Mr. H. A. Young, S.M. “These men, who had no active interest in the election, coming from districts outside the electorate, persisted in asking impossible questions,” said Sub-Inspector Packer. “They were asked by the chairman to refrain, but the questioning continued, and later McGuire called a speaker (Mr. Lyons) a liar. The men were ordered out by the police at the request of the chairman and when they left several others left also.”

He could not agree with the SubInspector’s contention that tne defendants were not interested parties because they were not electors, said Mr. Archer. Several gentlemen had come from all parts of New Zealand for the election and the whole Dominion was watching it with interest. Something more than a mere interjection was needed to create a disturbance. The men' only interjected, leaving the hall quietly when requested to do so. The candidate had repeated a canard which had previously caused a great deal of heat, said Mr. Archer, and believing the candidate guilty of a terminological inexactitude in repeating it, McGuire had called him a liar.