DANGER TO PRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 208, 3 September 1934, Page 3

DANGER TO PRESS.

SUPPRESSION OF FASCISTS. BRITISH WARNING. The dangers of dictatorship to the freedom of the Press were emphasised by Mr. J. H. Aitken, of Glasgow, in his presidential address to the annual delegate meeting of the National Union of Journalists at Stirling, says the "MailChester Guardian." Mr. Aitken said it was disquieting to find in a number of European countries hitherto run on democratic principles that the freedom of the Press had entirely disappeared. Newspapers had been rigorously controlled by the State, adverse criticism had been stifled, and the journalists themselves had been placed under a system of State control such as no section of civil servants in this country would submit to. "Fascism seems to be sweeping all over Europe, and everywhere it lays its paralysing hand on the Press, ruthlessly suppressing those, newspapers which oppose its principles, regrading journalists into mere puppets of the controlling dictators and their satellites, and making impossible any democratic organisation of working journalists," he said. "Fascism in Britain?" "We are apt to take it for granted that these events do not concern us in this country, and that the democratic principle is so thoroughly instilled into the British people that a similar upheaval would be impossible here. We must not forget that that was precisely the attitude of the German people a few years ago, and that in all countries where dictatorships now exist these dictators seized power by a coup d'etat and maintained their power by the ruthless suppression of all opposition. "Obviously, the newspaper Press, with its enormous power to influence public opinion, was the very first to be reduced to abject submission to the ruling powers, and in the event of a sudden coup in this country similar treatment would be meted out to us.'' The Newcastle branch tabled a resolution that the union should associate itself with the petition to the Home Secretary asking for the appointment of a Government Committee to inquire into the desirability of creating for the profession of journalists a statutory body with functions similar to those of the bodies which exist for medicine, the law, and other professions. Manchester proposed an amendment instructing the national executive council to take any necessary 6teps to oppose the creation of such a statutory body. The Manchester amendment was carried by 3902 votes to 431.