Activist Tim Shadbolt addresses a group of protesters outside the Auckland Town Hall in 1973. A leading figure in demonstrations against the Vietnam War during the late 1960s and 1970s, he was fined and sentenced to prison on a number of occasions for incidents relating to these protests. One of the most celebrated trials was for using obscene language at a protest meeting in 1971. Shadbolt argued, unsuccessfully, that the words 'bullshit', 'crap', 'shit' and 'piss' were no longer considered obscene by most people, and indeed were widely used, but he was overruled by the judge – something he later attributed in part to the different standards of conduct of the older generation.
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Photograph by Max Oettli
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