The Press MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1949. Final Election Broadcast

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25954, 7 November 1949, Page 6

The Press MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1949. Final Election Broadcast

The Prime Minister’s comment on the suggestion that the Supreme Court might be asked to restrain him from monopolising the national radio services on the last evening before polling day is worth careful study. Like the public, Mr Fraser does not know whether Mr Will Appleton is serious in his proposal; and he has accordingly tempered his serious and considered reply with a little badinage that sounds less good-humoured than he may have intended. It is the serious part of Mr Fraser’s statement, printed on Saturday, which should be studied by citizens and electors. In it Mr Fraser comes very close to declaring that the Labour Party, because it is the Government, has a stronger claim to broadcasting time than its opponents—or the best broadcasting time. In Parliament, Labour members claimed that the Prime Minister had the right “to “open the debate” (what debate?) and to close it. They also suggested that the Government had a right to use the broadcasting service to reply to “ abuse. by the press “ throughout the country ”, Although Mr Fraser did not repeat that suggestion, he obviously had it in mind when he spoke of the daily newspapers and periodicals, with a few exceptions, being opposed to Labour. Incidentally, Mr Fraser shows considerable hardihood in claiming that “we of the Labour “ Party do not complain or whine ” about this opposition. He is also less than fair to the newspapers which, by and large, give the Labour Party ample space in their news columns to present their case, to reply to their opponents, and, indeed, to reply to the editorial comments of the newspapers themselves. The references to the newspapers are red herrings. They are meant to distract public attention from the fact that a State service is being used in an election with less than scrupulous fairness. The Government has no more right to use the broadcasting services to help keep it in office than to use the Government Printing Office to turn out election material for the Labour Party.