A Slow Poison?

Over the past few years, it has been fairly evident that the powers that be were thinking along the lines of establishing a new gestapo. Remember the demonstration on indonesia on July 31, 1947, and the role played by the police? In Sydney, the similar demonstration a few days before, had some more sinister implications. There, police basher gangs mingled with the crowd, assaulting and carrying off demonstrators, without provocation or the shadow of authority, to third degree them in neighbouring cellars. One "interrogation" reported went like this:

1st Constable: What's your occupation?

Student: Student.

1st Constable: What's your nationality?

Student: Australian—Jewish extraction.

1st Constable: What are you studying?

Student: Medicine.

2nd Constable: I wouldn't like to have one of you Jewish bastards operating on me.

That Just testifies to the type of brainless thug our little Hitlers are willing to employ in their service.

In the last months of 1947, the police took a hand in the breaking up of a stopwork meeting in the Wellington Government Printing Office. During the Carpenters' dispute in March, 1948, Union officials in Auckland were "interviewed" by detectives—no criminal charge had been laid.

Witch-hunting in the civil service, introduced in the States by the great Harry two years ago, has since spread to New Zealand.

The Public Service Commission - (13/3/48) claims to exclude from "positions involving secrecy" (there are declarations of secrecy for most Jobs in the Public Service) and the "safety of the State" anyone "In active association with organisations the objects or methods of which conflicted with the national interest." This is dangerously vague and Implies a secret police dossier on every member of the Civil Service. Declarations of this kind were made in France in 1940, but proved more successful in persecuting patriots than quislings. The Holmes and Deynzer cases are familiar to us all.