We Will Be Overcome

Recently a number of persons, mainly university students, saw fit to chain themselves to Parliament Buildings.

Their motives in doing this are far from clear. However, one possible explanation is given by a large sign one of them had next to her, which read: "We have to do this to make ourselves heard."

In point of fact they have to do no such thing. Moreover, even if it were necessary, it is apparent that the action they chose did everything except make their case heard.

If anything came across as the resulting publicity, it was the facts relating the chaining and unchaining, not the protester's Vietnam views, and if any protesters have suffered any stifling of their views, we have yet to see it.

But their action is quite significant on a different level. It shows the desperation which the average thinking individual has come to feel in face of the totalitarian powerfulness of the New Zealand government.

The all-powerful contempt with which anti-citizen legislation (such as the Narcotics Act, the News Media Ownership Act, and the review of Public Services rental house policies) has been bulldozed through in the past year is a frightening demonstration of democracy at work in this country.

The time may yet come when men take to the streets —as some Europeans have done in South Africa—in a wholly understandable but horrifying expression of their faith in democracy.

We go all the way with Mr. P. B. Temm and his NZUSA congress speech. But we would also say that his overstatement of probable action damages his explanation of a very real threat.

This country's freedoms are not being overthrown openly in a wholesale manner. Rather, they are being cut out from under by a growing process of erosion.— H.B.R.