Convicted for Lying in

Last week Kathleen Davis, an 18 year old unemployed waitress pleaded guilty in the magistrates court to a charge of being idle and disorderly. The police prosecutor told Mr Wicks S.M. that on the 13th of March '73 Miss Davis had been found "at her place of residence lying in a sleeping bag on a mattress". She had told that she was not currently employed. She had $3.60 in her possession at the time. In mitigation Miss Davis said that she had earned the money at work, which she had left a week before, and that she had only been out of Arohata Women's Borstal for a month. She was convicted and ordered to come up for sentence in three months if called upon.

Kathleen Davis committed the crime of taking a week's holiday after a term of imprisonment in the notorious Arohata. She should have stayed at her waitressing job like a good little cog in the capitalist machine. It might have been an illpaid job, she might not have enjoyed such a servile deadend occupation, but so what? That's no excuse for being idle and disorderly is it? We can't have magistrates and policemen slaving away all day while Kathleen Davis lies round ... "In a sleeping bag on a mattress". Kathleen was punished for being recently out of Arohata, for being a worker who refused to work like a robot and for thinking that she could be like the boss and take time off when she felt tike it.

We can't have working people being idle and disorderly all over the place. That's the prerogative of the people who live off the profits of their labour. The people who tax them, fire them, take their rent, take their surplus value. And the people who convict them and order them to come up for sentence in three months' if called upon.