Police Get Itch

The Secondary School Students' radical magazine Itch is fast becoming he most read publication for the boys lown at Central. They just can't seem to et enough of this all purpose irritant of he repressive education system.

When the first Itch came out, it was imed at the schools but most of them never reached the students because they were confiscated by zealous headmasters and policemen. One seller had his house searched and 30 copies taken. Another bundle of 50 copies disappeared mysteriously from the train on the way to Gis-bourne. Later the aspiring Itch seller who was to have recieved them was rung up by the CIB and told that he could come down to the copshop and collect them (so that's where they were!) but if he did he would immediately be arrested for possessing an indecent document.

Back in Wellington the police rang a seller's parents, said they were the CIB and could they talk to them and their daughter together about Itch. A time was set. Later they rang up and said that the meeting was cancelled until the next week. The harrassment seemed to be having an effect for although sales were easy to come by one of the helpers of Itch 1 panicked and burnt her four bundles (200 copies).

Unperturbed the Itch people brought out Itch 2 knowing that as yet no prosecutions were to be brought against them. But last week the police swooped again, six plainclothes men raiding Resistance and taking five copies of Itch 2 hot off the press. Also a seller down at the railway station had his name taken and 80 odd copies confiscated.

Obviously not heeding the way the wind was blowing two people set out for a selling tour of the south of the North Island and in due course were stopped in Palmerston North. Their 100 copies were taken, as were their particulars, then lightened of their seditious load thev were set free.

So far no prosecutions have been undertaken. No copies have been returned One person walking into the copshop downtown after one of the recent raids found a captive audience (none having paid their meagre ten cents for a copy) of policemen behind a flurry of Itches.

Itch is an attempt to arm schoolkids with something more radical than the liberal "Affairs" magazine, and something more realistic than the generalisations and euphemisms they are force-fed in school. It has become very popular and despite harrassment, sales are booming.