Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 5. March 30 1981

Tour Definitely Stoppable

Tour Definitely Stoppable

The morning session of the conference was taken up with speeches by Trevor Richards, and the two fulltime National Organisers Pauline McKay and John Minto. Trevor affirmed that the tour is indeed stoppable. He highlighted the fact that the degree of anti-tour sentiment is higher at this stage of the campaign than in any other previous campaigns, even 1973 when Norman Kirk cancelled the proposed tour. There is every possibility that this tour will meet the same fate. It depends largely on the time and energy people are prepared to commit to this end.

Pauline and John outlined the campaign situation nationally, and gave some details of resolutions passed at the Auckland regional conference. The one point of dispute with the northern conference resolutions was on the question of a national petition. A resolution supporting this had been narrowly passed there. However it was overwhelmingly rejected by the Wellington conference. Reasons given were that it would require a large deployment of resources away from the May 1 mobilisation preparations and would be of doubtful effectiveness anyway, no matter how many signatures were attained.

The early afternoon session had been put aside for activists. It consisted of a series of workshops, run by specialists in particular areas. They were designed to pass on skills to as many people as possible. The skills were those regarded as being vital to the running of a campaign. The specific workshops included media relations, publicity, legal aspects, drama, and political strategies. The general feeling was that these were of value and most people gained something appreciable from them.