IN AND OUT OF COURT

Pioneer George Powell spent a memorable period with Bert Horton in sound-car activity. After working in Melbourne, they moved out into smaller country towns. In Whittlesea, Brother Powell offered literature to a man who, without saying a word, held out a sixpenny (5-cent) coin on the end of his finger in return for some literature. “Now,” he said, “you are under arrest for selling books without a license!” He was the local policeman in plain clothes. It so happened that court was in session that day, so Brother Powell was taken along, and the judge said he would hear this case first. The courtroom was full. All present received a good witness and did not appear unfriendly toward Brother Powell.

By this time the other brothers began to wonder what had happened to him. While the court was in session, Bert Horton peered around the door and was shocked to see his partner on the witness stand. Brother Powell was fined ten shillings (then the equivalent of $2, U.S.) for “selling books without a license.” He refused to pay the fine, because, as he told the court: “I have ten shillings, but I’m not willing to pay it, because I am preaching the Gospel and we don’t pay fines for that!” He was released, but for years afterward the police were calling at his sister’s home in Melbourne, trying to collect the fine.

THREATS FROM MOBS

Angry Salvation Army members mobbed the brothers in Townsville, Queensland, threatening to turn the sound car over. Opposition to the Kingdom proclamation was growing, religious leaders striving to turn public opinion against Jehovah’s people. Matilda Marsh was pioneering in Tasmania when a priest-inspired mob attempted to roll her trailer over a cliff into the sea. Later an angry crowd hurled large stones at the group of pioneers, badly damaging the trailer, and while they were away witnessing in rural areas the trailer was set afire and destroyed.

As sound cars and zealous publishers broadcast the Kingdom message throughout cities and towns, they often met with opposition from clergy-incited mobs. Lloyd Barry recalls the time when he and Tom Bradburne (Sydney congregation overseer and circuit overseer in those days) were in Catholic Maitland, New South Wales, for an assembly. At the last moment local authorities canceled the use of the Town Hall by Jehovah’s Witnesses, so at the time of the public meeting the brothers parked a sound car outside the hall and, using the loudspeaker, made a strong statement of protest, calling for recognition of freedom of speech and religion.

As the statement ended, a large mob that had gathered swarmed around the car and started to turn it over. But just at this moment a policeman appeared on the scene, and the mob, thinking he was about to arrest the brothers, stood back. However, the officer put his head through the car window and said: “Boys, if you value your lives, get going out of this!” Brother Bradburne revved up the engine, a way seemed miraculously to open in the crowd, and the car accelerated its way down the road with the police officer riding as passenger on the running board! Events like this were not infrequent in the days of sound-car activity.

CONFRONTING MOBS AT ASSEMBLIES

For Brother Barry this was the first of three successive weekends of coping with opposition to the Kingdom. On the following weekend he was chairman at an assembly in Lismore, New South Wales, serving there with a longtime pioneer, Arthur Willis. The public talk “Fascism or Freedom” had been widely advertised, especially by an information march with placards, participated in by some sixty local publishers. Everyone was talking about Jehovah’s Witnesses. There was also talk of a large group of Catholic sugarcane cutters coming in from the rurals to disrupt the scheduled meeting.

Sure enough, by the time the chairman stepped forward to introduce Brother Rutherford’s transcribed talk, a mob of several hundred husky-looking men had gathered at the back of the hall. Seeing the situation, the chairman made an outright statement about the tactics that Catholic Action had been using up to that time to disrupt the meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Immediately a spokesman for the group jumped up on a chair and started to call out, “Stop speaking against my ’ligion!” Turning to a lone police sergeant on duty, the chairman said, “Put that man out!” Even though this sergeant had arrested Brother Willis several days earlier during street magazine work, on this occasion he actually did put the man out!

The leaderless mob then listened in silence to the entire one-hour lecture. As it ended, however, they proceeded to create an uproar. They overturned a table displaying Bible literature. One of the mob threw a plastic “stink bomb” onto the platform, but as it landed the chairman caught it with a dropkick and sent it flying over the heads of the audience into the midst of the mobsters, where it burst​—to their discomfort. By this time police reinforcements were on the scene. They separated the mobsters from Jehovah’s Witnesses and their friends, who were able to retreat from the hall to the tune of loud booing.

It was on that same weekend of September 3, 1939, that Britain declared war on Germany; World War II was to bring further problems for Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The following weekend was marked by an assembly in the city of Toowoomba in the south of Queensland. This again was highlighted by a huge information march with the use of placards, the police providing protection against the mob that had gathered. On returning from the information march, Brother Barry and the zone (circuit) overseer, Douglas Begg, were summoned to the office of the city mayor. He informed the brothers that a short time earlier two Protestant clergymen had called at his office protesting against one of the signs in the march​—“Religion Is a Snare and a Racket.” Shortly afterward a young Catholic priest had called on him with a message from the bishop, directing attention to the Church’s support of the war effort and requesting that Jehovah’s Witnesses be denied use of the Town Hall the following day. The mayor had therefore canceled our hall booking.

At the scheduled time our sound car was parked outside the Town Hall, but the police prevented an attempted announcement over the loudspeaker. The assembly had to disperse without hearing the public lecture.

However, the meeting of the local city council was to be held the following evening. This provided the brothers the opportunity to prepare a direct, strongly worded letter to the city council, protesting this denial of freedom of speech. At the meeting that evening, the letter was read and council members debated its contents at length. About half of them were in favor of freedom of speech and the other half supported the mayor. The following morning the entire proceedings, including the full text of the letter itself, were published in the local newspaper. This gave a tremendous witness to Toowoomba and the surrounding rurals, where many expressed themselves favorably about Jehovah’s Witnesses.

By this time placard marching, or “information parades,” had become quite a feature of Kingdom publicity, and it was decided to use this means of advertising in a pronounced way during this convention. Unknown to the convention administration, police officers had quietly come to the roadside just outside the tents. They listened carefully to the field service announcements, taking down details of all the prearranged meeting places on specified corners of streets in Sydney and suburban shopping centers. Police were then sent to these areas, where they waited to arrest the brothers as soon as they put on their placards.

One brother recalls that he and his partner made a mistake and went to the wrong corner. Thus they were able to wear their placards without any interference. When no other publishers came to join them, however, they realized they had come to the wrong place. When they found their way to the correct corner, the policeman waiting for them there greeted them with a smile and said: “What kept you?” He then took the placards they were wearing and the banners they were carrying and asked them to accompany him and the other brothers, who had arrived earlier, to the police station. It was quite a procession and attracted a lot of attention as ten or twelve brothers followed the two police officers, who were carrying the signs in such a way that they could be clearly read by all the passersby. In fact, this brought more publicity than if the brothers had been permitted to wear their placards without interference!