BEYOND A JOKE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 65, 18 March 1925, Page 4

BEYOND A JOKE.

Hitherto the Fascist movement in Britain has been regarded as a joke. If a few "die-hards" who regarded Mussolini as a saviour of society liked to play at being "black shirts," it was their affair; no great harm could come from a movement so foreign to British ways, including the British sense of 'humour. Slight disturbances in Trafalgar Square and the use of an occasional "stinkbomb" at Socialist meetings might be regrettable, but they were not disturbing. Kidnapping, however, is a different matter. It is a very definite and grave breach of the law, of which the community must take serious notice. It is not certain that the men who seized, under the eyes of railway officials, Mr. Pollitt. the "Red" leader, and prevented him from speaking at Liverpool, are members of the Fascist movement, but it is much more likely that they are than that they belong, as suggested, to the more moderate section of the Labour party. The outrage closely resembles some of the acts that have dUgraeed | the Fascist movement in Italy. This sort of thing is intolerable, a blunder as well as a crime, and the Government j must do all it can to find the perpetra- j tors and make an example of them. If the Fascist movement ma>de headway in England, and wa.s joined by the Ku Klux Klan—but no. wo decline to consider the possibility of "black shirts" being reinforced by night-shirts. To imagine thii ; hooded absurdity desecrating the woods I of England is too horrible.