Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 27, No. 4. 1964.
Auckland Students Support Editor
Auckland Students Support Editor
The Auckland University Students' Association has supported the editor of Craccum in publishing a poem and book review which were banned by the Executive.
At the half Annual General Meeting the following motion was defeated:
"That this meeting censures the Students' Association Executive for destroying 5,000 copies of Craccum on the purported ground of indecency, without first calling for a full and reasonable examination of the offending material." In response to pointed questions some executive members said that they had condemned the book which they had not read.
Although this motion of censure was lost, a motion which affirmed the belief of the meeting that the banned articles were of sufficient sociological and literary merit to be published was passed.
Speaking to the first motion, John Sanders, Editor of Craccum said that the Students Association were relying on the legal opinion of Mr. L. P. Leary Q.C. The Craccum staff objected that the Students Association Excutive had adopted extreme measures by suppressing articles of genuine literary interest. He said "We consider that no group of students have the right to suppress the genuine literary, religious, or political opinions of another student. We object that the Students' Executive did not seek expert literary opinion on the literary value of the published literary works. We object that the Students' Executive did not go to the students in deciding whether or not students would have been unduly opposed to the publication of these literary articles, but rather took it on their own shoulders. We object to the supremacy of personal preference and uninformed taste where a question of the Public Good is concerned."
Sanders continued "The integrity of the writers is impugned by the Students' Association Executive. This is a vital plank in their argument that there was a mischievous design in publishing the original articles. If this is so then why have not the writers themselves been approached to clarify their motivations, intentions, and purposes. Should these be so readily assumed when the writers are in absentia or ignored?"
Immediately preecding the publication of the poem in 1963 Mr. Baxter said "a bit grim eh? And what has it got to do with poetry and education? The point is I think, that there are quite a few Miss Glubbs in this country—God help them and us if they are teaching poetry—it will bear the impression of their personalities."
Mr. Baxter explaind his intentions in the following words:
"Not long ago I was asked to contribute some verse to Craccum. The request pleased me as I have always felt the varsity newspapers were able to provide a livelier and less hidebound slant on the customs of Pig Island Society than our established and solemn periodicals are able to do. Instead of submitting to Craccum my Ode To A Seagull Seen From The Top Of Mount Vicloria—a five hundred line poem in the manner of the earlier Shelley, which I am keeping for the school anthologies I sent up the Sad Tale Of Matilda Glubb, the story in rhymed couplets of a Primary School teacher who learns too late that she has chosen a dead end profession.
"Miss Glubb is a fictitious person. There is also a delicate moral issue which I. as a member of the Catholic Church, have to consider whenever I let a poem of mine be published—would the poem be likely to influence some person not already so disposed, to an act of self-abuse, or some less obvious sexual misdemeanour? I cannot see that the Sad Tale Of Matilda Glubb could lead anybody to do anything except retire from the leaching profession. There is also the even more delicate matter of my private intention in writing the poem at all. My intention was to expose one of the deepest ulcers of Pig Island society—the extraordinary ignorance and vacuity of mind which overtakes so many of our educational workers and drives some of them especially the women to the jumping oil place.
Miss Glubb goes mad because she has never understood her own nature."
Mr. Baxter's view was in absolute contradistinction to Mr. Leary's, said Mr. Sanders. Mr. Leary's view is that Miss Glubb goes mad because the lawyer's clerk persues her wilh lascivious intent.
About Mr, Babington's Review of Mary McCarthy's novel The Group Mr. Leary had this to say in his opinion: "I consider that in the article a sexual passage from an American magazine has been highlighted and in the name of literary criticism it has been discussed with every form of sexual epithet, and most forms of sexual depravity that can be stuffed into it. It is an obscene piece of work."
Sanders said that Leary's main point seemed to him to be that the mention of sex in a literary review is inexcusable. "One wonders if the distinguished Q.C. is thinking in terms of the 19th or twentieth centuries." Some of Leary's opinions concerning the article were highly emotive and non-legal.
Sanders then went on to quote from an opinion prepared by Mr. Frank Haigh of whom he said "the author of this opinion is also a learned and respected member of the legal profession." With one exception, he has concentrated on the question of literary censorship, and recently published an article in the New Zealand quarterly review Landfall. In his opinion Mr. Haigh had the following points to make:
The students of the University should have liberty and freedom to read and think as the spirit moves them.
We have to decide whether the tendency of these articles is to deprave those whose minds today are open to immoral influences and into whose hands this issue of Craccum might fall in the year 1964. We are not concerned with Victorian standards.
Since the act of sex is not shameful, neither are descriptions of it. Furthermore there is no reason why the fad that people enjoy sex should not be emphasized.
Mr. Haigh says in his opinion, "In the light of this background to The Group I consider that the review is an honest one dealing with the different facets of this novel, and also with Miss McCarthy as a writer and critic.
In my opinion the review is not indecent within the meaning of the Indecent Publications Act."
Referring to Mr. Baxter's poem Mr. Haigh goes on, "There is nothing to suggest that Mr. Baxter is not sincere and honest in the views heproducc puts forward. The fact that some of the words used may shock certain people does not mean that the poem is injurious to the public good. The poem must be considered as a whole, n my opinion it is not indecent within the meaning of the Indecent Publications Act 1963. This opinion is in accord with the recent decision of the Indecent Publications Tribunal re Another Country."