REDS ON TRIAL.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18546, 23 November 1925, Page 4

REDS ON TRIAL.

DEFENCE OPENS. (Bt CABLE—PRESS ABBOCIATIOK COFtBIOHt.) (AITSnALIAS AND X.Z. ' CiBMS ASSOCUtIOS.) LONPOX, November 20. Sir Henry Slesser, counsel for accused, concluding a six-hours' speech at the trial of British Communists, said that this was one of the most important cases submitted to a British jury for many years. On the decision depended the liberties and opportunities for men to write and express their opinions for many years to come. Sir Henry Slesser called only one witness, who testified as to purchasing at his Majesty's stationery office, copies of the Government report on Russia. One defendant Henry Pollitt, addressed the jury. He was refused permission by the Judge to quoto the speeches of Lords Birkenhead and Carson and Sir William Joynson-Hicks, the Judge remarking, "I cannot have their seditions mixed up with yours." [Last month Scotland Yard carried out dramatic simultaneous raids on the London headquarters of the Communist Party, Communist offices, and private houses. A number of prominent Communists were arrested, and in the opening stages of their trial the AttorneyGeneral, in his case for the Crown, said the nature of the conspiracy, the existence of which he undertook to prove, was that the defendants were the heads in Britain of an illegal organisation.]