The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News. Morning News. The Echo and The Sun. MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1936. FASCISM IN ENGLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 236, 5 October 1936, Page 6

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News. Morning News. The Echo and The Sun.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1936. FASCISM IN ENGLAND.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

One Sunday last March Sir Oswald Mosley addressed a meeting of Fascists in the Albert Hall. There were 10,000 people, not all Fascists, in the hall, and in spite of elaborate official precautions, and the use of 2500 policemen, the meeting was marked by "continuous disorder, within and without." Anti-Fascist demonstrators outside the hall were charged bv the police, who used batons, a few people were injured and others were arrested. In the House of Commons later, the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, attributed the disturbance to the attempts to hold anti-Fascist meetings, in spite of a police prohibition, and when asked if it were not desirable to prohibit the use of the Albert Hall for Fascist meetings, he replied: "We must face the responsibility. We are living in a free country." There was merit in this reply, but British people, after the happenings in London yesterday, have good reason to wonder just how much the Home Secretary and the Cabinet of which he is a member are prepared to allow.

The ostensible purpose of the Fascist gathering yesterday was to "march in the East End." Why should they wish to march there? In recent months there have been strong protests in the House, of Commons and elsewhere against the activities of bands of Fascists, which it has been alleged amount to a systematic "propaganda of hatred, provocation and persecution" against the Jews, who comprise a large part of the East End population. They have been holding meetings and marching within the East End, and there have been consequent disturbances. Testerday, following all this, there was to have been a big march, and —to quote the cabled report —"in spite of an appeal by five East End mayors and a Jewish petition with 100,000 signatures," the Home Office refused to intervene to prevent it. In the event, and— who can doubt? —most fortunately, the Commissioner of Police himself took the responsibility of preventing it. In the eircuihstances, the proposed march can hardly be described as anything else but a highly provocative Jew-baiting expedition, and it must have been attended by serious disorders, and have left behind it intense feelings of resentment and hatred.

The British Government, it may be conjectured, is anxious not to take up an attitude, towards the Fascists which would encourage them to pose as heroes and martyrs. In a democratic country they—like the Communists, whose goal also is the destruction of democracy —have the rights of freedom of sppech and assembly, and it is not in the spirit of British democracy to deny them those rights. But the Government has a duty also to the great majority of the population, and part of that duty is to protect any section of its people being harassed, insulted and intimidated by any other section. "Public opinion in East London," said Mr. George Lansbury recently, "is quite certain that ordinary folk would never be permitted to make the speeches made by Fascists without being prosecuted, and asks why this should be." Until the Home Secretary and his Government can satisfactorily answer this and other questions, which will be asked the more urgently because of yesterday's happenings, they will sharpen the suspicion that they are partial to the Fascist movement.