NEWSPAPER ATTACK ON JEWS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25346, 20 November 1947, Page 7

NEWSPAPER ATTACK ON JEWS

OWNER ACQUITTED OF LIBEL CHARGE LONDON, November 18. A jury at the Liverpool Assizes acquitted James Caunt, proprietor and editor of the “Morecambe and .Heysham Visitor,” of a charge of seditious libel of the Jews. A cheer greeted the verdict, which the foreman said was unanimous. Mr Justice Birkett, summing up, said: “It is in the highest degree essential that nothing be done to destroy or weaken the liberty of the press.” Mr G. O. Slade, K.C., for the defence, said that it would be a black dav for liberty if Caunt were convicted. The prosecution, he said, was an attempt to put back the clock by at least 150 years. As far as he knew, no newspaper editor had been prosecuted for seditious libel for over a century. Caunt’s newspaper article said that the British Jews were the worst black market offenders, and that they should “disgorge their ill-gotten wealth in trying to dissuade their American brothers from facilitating the entrance into Palestine of European Jewish scum.” The Jews were “a plague on Britain.”

Mr A. D. Gerrand. K.C.. prosecuting, said that the question was whether Caunt had intended to stir race violence by promoting hostility between different classes of the King’s subjects. Caunt. cross-examined, said he intended the article to offend the Jews. Caunt, after his acquittal, said that the prosecution was political. The verdict was “a blow to the Government, who apnear to render h*n service to the Jewish fraternity.” The case had cost him £3OOO.