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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33 No. 15 1970
Free Preston!
Free Preston!
Thoreau once said that there came a time when the only way a man could remain free in the state which denied all the basic human rights, was to go to gaol. Last Tuesday night Bruce Preston was arrested and taken to Mt Crawford gaol to start a ten day sentence for failing to pay a fine resulting from his refusal to attend a medical examination imposed under the National Military Service. For Bruce this is the expected termination of over ten months of callous and bungling ineptitude on the part of the Department of Labour whose job it is to control the current Golden Kiwi raffle system of compulsory military training. But New Zealand 1970 does not bear much resemblance to the America of Thoreau's rhetoric and Bruce Preston is only a conscription martyr by default, for the whole shabby performance could have been prevented if Labour Department officialdom had been doing the job taxpayers expect.
And the blame doesn't just sit on the tired shoulders of Mr A C Davey, Secretary of Labour. It is also shared by his colleague in the Justice Department, Mr Missen, whose job presumably includes overseeing the progress of "Justice11 a la Kiwi in order that "it be seen to be done".
Justice, in the case of Bruce Preston, has patently not been done, no more so, in fact, than it has been in the case of another recent Mt Crawford inmate,. Tim Shadbolt. To many the real nature of this National Government was long ago exposed. Never since the notorious Massey-Coates era have such a bunch of obvious third-raters occupied the Treasury benches. Little wonder that a man such as Muldoon appears to shine when viewed alongside his utterly colourless, singularly talentless colleagues in the Cabinet. These men make Departmental inefficiency possible, and one should not be surprised when one hears in the future that others such as Bruce Preston have been taken off to gaol. What with all the manifold stupidities of the present inaccurately entitled "narcotics" legislation and the obvious preparedness of the Courts to uphold blanket provisions against civil liberties inherent in the Police Offences and Crimes Acts, it becomes apparent that New Zealand youth in general is likely to gain an increasing familiarity with our prison system.
| 1 |
Bruce was balloted for military service in the 1969 ballot. At the time he was a full-time student at Victoria. Prior to the ballot he had registered provisionally as a conscientious objector. |
| 2 |
On Tuesday, 9th December 1969, he appeared before the Conscientious Objection Committee-Messrs H L Bockett (Chairman), C W File, G R H Peterson, Mr G Brown (Secretary). He told the committee that he was not a pacifist and that his objections were not based on religious grounds, but that he opposed C.M.T. "because I think it is unnecessary and undesirable in this country; as a protest against the war in Vietnam; and in solidarity with the world-wide movement against that war and against war and militarism in general." Bruce stated that he would not perform C.M.T. whatever the decision of the committee and did not accept that they had a right to judge the state of his conscience. He (worst of all probably in their eyes) accused them of complicity in the continuance of war [unclear: th]roughout the world. |
| 3 |
On the following day Bruce received a letter from the Committee which indicated that they could dish it out but they could not take it. Their decision? -"application dismissed." |
| 4 |
On the 13th February of this year, Bruce received notice from the Labour Department to attend x-ray and visual examinations in preparation for military service. Bruce replied in a letter dated 16th February reiterating his statement to the Committee that he would not perform C.M.T. He did not attend his medical appointments on the 19th February. |
| 5 |
In a letter dated 19th February, the Labour Department told Bruce to return the card M.T.4 (Provisional Certificate of Registration as a Conshy), which he did. The Department then sent him another card (M.T.2) a certificate of registration for service in the Armed Forces, which he sent back to the Department. |
| 6 |
Several weeks elapsed - presumably the Labour Department would have approached Dan Riddiford's Justice Department legal eagles for a ruling. Then the Labour Department sent Bruce another notice to report for visual and x-ray examinations - this time as a registered letter. The visual was for 26th March. Bruce replied in a letter dated 19th March reiterating his position. |
| 7 |
During April 1970 Bruce became seriously ill and was admitted to hospital on the 23rd of that month suffering from a peri-nephric abcess of the left kidney. A few days after he entered Wellington Hospital a summons to court on a charge under the National Military Service Act 1961, issued in the name of the Labour Department, was delivered to his home address. Through his brother, Bruce contacted a lawyer who arranged to have the court hearing postponed. About two days before he was scheduled to undergo a major kidney operation, with his life in danger, a Labour Department official called on Bruce at the hospital and questioned him as to his attitude and whether he still intended to refuse to attend examinations when ordered. Bruce was seriously ill but Mr Davey's pen-pushers had to keep those files up to date. |
| 8 |
Bruce successfully recovered and nine weeks after entering hospital he returned to work. On the 26th June he was convicted and fined in the Magistrates Court for failing without lawful excuse to comply with a directive to present himself for a visual examination, under Section II and 56 (I)d of the National Military Service Act. This conviction was unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court. |
| 9 |
Before he left the Courtroom on 26th June following his conviction, Bruce was handed a further notice by Mr J P Walsh, an Administration Officer of the Labour Department. This notice required him to report for visual examination. Bruce didn't report. |
| 10 |
Receiving a further summons to Court issued in the name of the Labour Department, Bruce was charged as previously. On 28th August he was again convicted and fined. During this period Bruce made an inquiry concerning the possibility of a re-hearing by the C.O. Committee. He received a letter dated 24th August and signed by Mr G Brown, Secretary of the Conscientious Objection Committee, in which Mr Brown stated that the Committee "was not in a position to grant a re-hearing." The Committee is under the control of the Secretary of Labour-It does what he orders. If the Secretary had wished it he could have used powers given him under the Act to have resolved the situation at this stage. In actual fact, as will be seen later, the Secretary, Mr Davey, gave verbal assurances that he had tried to persuade Bruce by letter to apply to him for a rehearing. Bruce has never seen such a letter. |
| 11 |
Bruce decided not to pay any fines and to make a stand in principle against the National Military Service Act. He had the impression that the Labour Department fully intended to continue prosecuting him until he complied. On the evening of 6th October he was arrested by the police for non-payment of fines and imprisoned in Mt Crawford gaol to serve a ten day sentence. |
| 12 |
On the following morning Salient was informed of what had happened and rang Chris Wheeler, a friend of Bruce's to check the story. Chris then phoned Eddie Isbey, Labour member for Grey Lynn, and recounted the main events to him. Mr Isbey contacted Mr Davey and ex plained the implications of the case to him. Mr Davey assured Mr Isbey that Bruce had in fact been sent a letter asking him to apply for a re-hearing but that no reply had been received. Mr Isbey then rang Mr Missen at the Justice Department and was told that the Department could not, of course, interfere in lawful judgements passed in the Courts of our fair land. Mr Isbey then spoke to Dan Riddiford for half an hour and Dan, although not at all sympathetic, (he probably could not understand what it was all about) said that if Bruce's lawyer, Hec MacNeill, was prepared to make an approach on Bruce's behalf, he (Dan) might consider exercising the Queen's Royal Prerogative to have the sentence quashed. Before Mr MacNeill can act, however, he must receive instructions from Bruce, who is unlikely to feel very charitable about being forgiven over something that wasn't his idea in the first place. As Salient goes to press it seems probable that an oral question will be asked in the House and whole issue made the subject of a Parliamentary debate. It's not too late for democratic process to work even now. |
There is an [unclear: important historie] aspect to the Preston case which has obviously been forgotten. The last case where anyone was imprisoned after being refused registration as a conscientious objector was in 1955 when the Hansen brothers of Waikato's Beeville community each served three months imprisonment along with a cousin, under the provisions of the original Labour-introduced, RSA-supported Conscription Act. Their applications for registration as conscientious objectors had been turned down, apparently because their grounds for objection were humanitarian and not "religious". Arising out of their refusal to report for the required medical examination the Hansens were gaoled for six weeks for refusing to pay the resultant fines Sentencing them, the Magistrate described the Military Training Act of that time as "one of the most inept pieces of legislation on the Statute Book." Upon their release they were again gaoled for continuing their "offence". Widespread criticism of Government ineptitude followed and undoubtedly influenced changes which were to take place when the present modified system of conscription was reintroduced by the National Government in 1961 after a three year break under Walter Nash's Labour Government.
The renamed National Military Service Act included two features which were undoubtedly meant to cope with the sort of situation which had been presented seven years earlier by the Hansens. Under the Act the Secretary of Labour could apply to the Conscientious Objection Committee for a re-hearing "if new and material evidence is available." The Secretary of Labour also had power, under Section 29 (2) of the Act to provisionally register "in the register of conscientious objectors any person subject to registration, notwithstanding that he has refused or failed to make any application in that behalf, if in the Secretary's opinion there are reasonable grounds for thinking that he is a conscientious objector..." Mr Davey had the necessary grounds available to register Bruce as a conscientious objector. He didn't even need to have Bruce's permission. Now Mr Davey says that a letter was sent to Bruce asking him to present "new and material evidence" so that the Committee could be reconvened.
Yet Bruce can produce written evidence that in fact his approach to the Committee was knocked back by the Committee's secretary, Mr Brown. And Mr Brown, by a custom as old as bureaucracy, cannot make any statement which his Departmental Head, Mr Davey, is not directly responsible for. So Mr Davey didn't want to give Bruce a second chance. But Mr Davey says he did give Bruce a second chance. He sent a mysterious letter which Bruce never saw. Perhaps it was sent when Bruce was in hospital and got mislaid somehow. Perhaps the letter was written and both the copies got filed away and/or the Class VI clerk carrying the letter to the Post (registered, of course, like all good Government letters) tripped and dropped it down a drain and/or perhaps perhaps is this the way Government Departments are always run or is it just that they think they can get away with this sort of crass stupidity because National Party benches have become the home away from home for the nation's geriatric misfits without the will or the energy to do the job they were voted into power to do.
People with moral principles like Bruce Preston shouldn't be put into gaol because of those principles. All the Labour Department legal advisory officers, all the Justice Department legal advisory officers, all the magistrates and all the Supreme Court judges and all the Dan Riddifords, Daveys and Missens will tell you that it was a very simple matter of whether the law should mean exactly what it purports to mean in all those files and records and statutes and acts and Law Society Reports that they so revere. They say Bruce Preston wilfully refused to attend a visual examination and that under Section 21 D 9e) (11) b z ii he committed an offence - to wit etc, etc, ad infinitum. But Bruce Preston is in gaol because a stupid law was stupidly interpreted by Stupid men.