A sadistic communist

Stuff reports:

The files are set against the backdrop of the global uncertainty of the Cold War. Intelligence officers were identifying subversives suspected of Soviet espionage, and were investigating whether Green had any communist affiliations or leanings that would affect his suitability for citizenship.

The evidence they found hardly seems shocking: the first record comes from a 1953 report that Green had attended a NZ-USSR film evening in Wellington and was on the NZ-USSR Society Wellington branch mailing list.

Then a 1954 Special Branch report found he “agitated” for a Communist Party speaker to address students at Auckland Teachers’ Training College. …

The principal, Sim, told the intelligence officers Green was a “complete egocentric with a contempt for authority”.

Sim would not let Green teach history because he didn’t trust him: “he had distributed a number of Russian Communist pamphlets to fifth and sixth formers until he was quickly stopped”.

So a communist teacher trying to indoctrinate students. But far worse than that.

“There has been one occasion when Green was guilty of the most sadistic treatment of a boy and [the principal] bitterly regrets that even then he failed to take a strong line. …

One word in particular leapt out: sadistic — because it rang true with his own experience of Green more than two decades later.

“He wanted me to receive and give torture whilst tied naked to a chair and also using the school cane.”

It was legal to cane pupils back then, but most definitely not to cane them naked and tied to a chair!

And Green himself won’t face justice: he died in 2022.

A pity he escaped.

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