Kevin Sinclair has at least one dislike stronger than that for students. It is the Committee on Vietnam.

Last Week, under the front page heading "Vietniks Support Labour with Horror Campaign" he let that dislike diston the facts.

"The Vietnam protesters." he wrote, "say they will get the cash [for mass-circulation booklets] from voluntary donations. To prove this they have printed a list of advance donors which will be distributed when they ask the faithful to dig deep to support their propaganda effort.

"Among the dozen or so early donors are a number of active members of the Communist Party."

Then five names are listed, with donations totalling £21.

Here Are The Facts:

• There are 72 names on the list, not "a dozen or so."

• None of the Communists he names was among the first dozen donors.

• The donations from the Communists he names represent only 5.6 per cent of the total donations.

Advance copies of the booklet had been in general circulattion two weeks before the article appeared yet Sinclair apparently failed to obtain one.

Yet he wrote:

"Judging from the past record of the committee and members, this will be another anti-American and anti-Government outburst."

In fact, the booklet proves to contain photos drawn from USIS. Associated Press, and New York Times photo services. Its text is taken from the New York Times, News-week, Esquire, and the Sunday Mirror.

But The Story was substantially wrong:

• Nine months earlier, a Truth reporter had cited The Same Plat as an example of the slums in which students arc forced to live.

• The same landlord had been featured by the Sunday Times two days earlier for a slum house he owned in a nearby suburb.

• When the tenants vacated the flat, none of them were students.

• Truths reporter unexpectedly failed to get the quotations on accommodation he expected from secretary Mike King. Instead, he made them up (see separate story).

Following student protests in early 1965. a Truth reporter approached the students association and asked for assistance in determining whether complaints about accommodation were Justified.

Some weeks afterwards. Truth began to publish the Sunday News and his article appeared there.

For days on end." the reporter wrote. "I was repeatedly reminded of the misery of hundreds of people who live in this city, and the feeling of utter hopelessness that overcomes young people who come to Wellington to study."

Same flat!

Photographs of the same flat were printed under the headline "Shortage and exploitation make many live in slums" (Sunday News, June 20, 1965).

Here is how the flat was then described:

"A hazard to health and an unsightly mess is how the entrance to this dwelling is best described. No matter how hard the tenants fight to keep it clean and liveable, they are always defeated by creeping wood rot, leaks, and general dampness."

Same landlord!

Truth reporter Kevin Sinclair must regret the ironic way in which his story followed the Sunday Times article on a house in Norway Street owned by the same landlord.

The Truth article had been completed and set in type the previous week.

But the Sunday Times story throws light on the landlord on whom Mr. Sinclair was prepared to base his whole accusation against Victoria students, and on the extent to which he checked his source of facts.

It also illustrates the condition in which this landlord is prepared to let a house.

The description of this landlord's second property makes interesting reading:

"A Hungarian family in Wellington live in conditions so squalid that many would not believe them possible.

"The house has:

"• No washing facilities— Mrs. M—— does the washing and dishes between piles of, rubbish stacked in the backyard. There is no outside light.

"• A tiny dining-room without windows or electric-light. Boxes containing plates land food line walls that are stained green with damp.

"• One cupboard. Clothes and personal effects are piled on boxes and battered suitcases lining every room.

"• Little fresh air. The concrete walls are stained with green mould. A stale, damp smell permeates the room.

"• A bath and copper—the home's only source of hot water—set on an earth floor. The toilet Is squeezed between the copper and a tin wall. There is no light in the shed.

"When the family moved in the cottage had neither doors nor window panes and the interior was piled with decayed rubbish." (Dominion Sunday Times, April 24.)

Investigation

Students association accommodation officer Geoff Bertram told Salient that he had investigated the case when the Truth article first appeared.

At the time the Sunday News article was written, students were living in the flat.

However, when the tenants vacated the flat, the composition of the flat-members had altered, and none of them was attending university.

Mr. Bertram said that one of the tenants was. however, still technically a student in that he had paid his students association fee for that year.

A Salient team which investigated the present state of the property found it is again tenanted. The property, which is approached through a slushy, filthy path and steps lined with dead rats, has been partly repaired. Some of the weather-boarding has been replaced, although much is still riddled with dry-rot.

In some places, a person of usual strength could push his fist right through the wall, and plastic film replaces window-glass.

• Editorial comment on Page 3.

We Refused A 200 Bed Hostel!

Why? See P.3