Democracy Defends Itself

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21940, 14 November 1936, Page 14

Democracy Defends Itself

The British Government’s Public Order Bill, details of which have now been published, seems to have the support of all parties in the House of Commons and of the country as a whole; and that support will be strengthened by the Home Secretary’s disturbing revelation that fascists as well as communists are being subsidised from abroad. It is nevertheless true that the measure will be difficult' to administer and that it may not resolve the Government’s dilemma. The methods of the British fascists, like their financial resources, come in part from abroad. The strategy now being employed by

Sir Oswald Mosley is the strategy which Herr Hitler perfected in the five years or so before 1931. Political demonstrations are staged in the most provocative manner possible and With the deliberate intention of creating riots. If the authorities take no action to prevent disturbances, the fascists then claim that the government, being a democratic government, is incapable of keeping order and that therefore the task devolves on them. If, on the other hand, the government uses drastic measures to prevent provocative demonstrations, the fascists can always claim that they are the victims' of oppression, that political liberty has ceased to exist, and that the government is dominated by “ the Reds.” The British Union of Fascists concentrates its activities in the East End of London, not because it expects or desires to make converts there, but because a political riot can be provoked in the East End more easily than in any other part of England. The British Government proposes to deal with this situation by widening the powers of the police to prohibit or divert political processions and by prohibiting the wearing of political unifprms. The difficulty of the first provision is that, unless the police use these powers with the utmost caution, it will be possible for Sir Oswald Mosley and his followers to plead that political freedom has been curtailed. The difficulty of the second provision is one of interpretation; and it is significant that the responsibility of deciding what constitutes a political uniform is to be left to the magistrate. In any case, no legal measures can prevent what is the principal and most dangerous weapon of the fascists —calculated provocation to political violence. The agent provocateur, like the blackmailer, is not easy to catch in the net of the law.