TY  - BOOK
AU  - Pratt,John
AU  - Barrington,A.C.
AU  - Barrington,J.M.
TI  - The prison diary of A.C. Barrington: dissent and conformity in wartime New Zealand 
SN  - 9781927322314
AV  - JX1962.A2 P73 2016
U1  - 940.53162092 23
PY  - 2016///
CY  - Dunedin, New Zealand
PB  - Otago University Press
KW  - Barrington, A. C.
KW  - Wellington Prison
KW  - New Zealand
KW  - History
KW  - Pacifists
KW  - Diaries
KW  - Political prisoners
KW  - World War, 1939-1945
KW  - Political persecution
KW  - 20th century
KW  - Social life and customs
N1  - Includes bibliographical references and index; 1; Dissent, Imprisonment and the Barrington Diary --; 2; Mount Crawford Prison, 1941 --; 3; Life in Mount Crawford Prison --; 4; Prison Staff and Officials --; 5; The Inmates --; 6; Prison Past and Present --; 7; Dissent, Intolerance and the Dark Side of Paradise
N2  - "A.C. (Archie) Barrington was a leading New Zealand pacifist during World War 2. Incarcerated in Mount Crawford Prison for his beliefs in 1941, he kept an illicit diary, scrawled in the margins of books. Many years later his son John happened across the diary and painstakingly reconstructed it. Such documents are exceptionally rare - until recent times prisoners were not allowed to keep any record of their experiences and many were illiterate anyway. Barrington vividly and compellingly recorded the squalid, rundown conditions, monotonous and exhausting labour, the intense cold from which there was little protection, and the strategies he and his fellow pacifists adopted to enable them to cope with prison life. John Pratt has edited the diary and provides a fascinating commentary on the issues it raises in relation to prison life then and now. He also addresses a fundamental question - what were Barrington and his like doing in prison, when similar expressions of dissent would almost certainly have been ignored in Australia or Britain? Why was New Zealand, with its 'fair go', egalitarian reputation, so intolerant and punitive? Pratt chronicles a history of intolerance, suspicion and deep-seated antipathies that may go some way towards explaining the current penal saturation in this 'friendly' land."--Cover
ER  -