PERILOUS PLIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 148, 25 June 1934, Page 8

PERILOUS PLIGHT

DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM

LABOUR AND POWER

Speaking, at the annual conference and students' reunion of the Manchester Division of the National Council of Labour Colleges recently, Professor Harold J. Laski, whose'subject was "The necessity of political education in a democracy, "said democratic government all over the world 'was in a parlous, not to say dangerous, condition, reports the "Manchester Guardian.-"

"Wo aro tempted to believe," said Professor Laski, "that what has happened in Germany, Austria, and Italy cannot happ6n in this country. Do not let us deceive ourselves. Those who say that tho English national character is a character with a gonius for compromise, that' in tho nature 'of things will avoid tho violent excesses of 'lesser breeds? without tho, law,' forget thnt in tho period of organised capitalist society • tho governing, class of .this country has never been effectively challenged. Its genius for compromise.: has been a function 'of its wealth and unchallenged supremacy, and in tho cruciblo of experience new things liko the. development of Sir Oswald Moslcy, the dove'lopmont of this now Sedition Bill, and tho fact that since 1919 there'have been moro prosecutions ovor freedom of speech in this .democracy than in the whole of tho last fifty years aro things that ought to make us realiso that democratic government is threatened hero as elsewhere" Thero was, Professor Laski continued, no doubt-.that Fascism in its different forms was gaining ground in England, whothor its expression was the rhotorical expression given it by Sir Oswald Moslcy or tho mealy-mouthed expression that it was given by Mr Ramsay MacDonald. In tho North, and particularly tho North-east, its basis was largely working-class support—support that was,' ho admitted, ignorant, tragic,' that was fed by misery, but still was working-class support. Tho easy slogans of a Fascist movemont had exactly tho psychology of escapo from immediate ills'-that a body .of half-educated peoplo were tempted to accept without question. Professor Laski,' referring to the Sedition Bill as "tho most dangerous attack upon public freedom introduced wtthi,n a hundred years" of English history," said tho offences it mado pos"siblo were so wide, its implications so far-reaching, that before over it was applied every printer of Marxian and pacifist literature was going to think twice beforo he accepted an order. It was not inconceivable that the literaturo needed by that council for itspropaganda would not bo printed through fear of consequences.