GUARDING CIVIL LIBERTIES

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27402, 15 July 1954, Page 10

GUARDING CIVIL LIBERTIES

ADDRESS TO NEW COUNCIL PROFESSOR, MINISTER AND UNION LEADER A professor of philosophy, a minister of religion, and a trade union leader were the speakers when the recently-formed Canterbury Council of Civil Liberties held a public meeting last evening to discuss what need there is for such a council. “I would suggest that in a country with our traditions, there is only one word that really fits people who are anxious to clamp down on our intellectual freedom, and that is the word ‘subversive’,” said Professor A. N. Prior, professor of philosophy at Canterbury University College. “People in positions of influence who are careless of our liberties and even unhappy about them, are subversive in a more subtle and sinister sense than the handful of Communists and pacifists to whom the term is usually applied, for they are undermining that tor which we as a nation stand. “This duty of defending the free world presupposes more fundamental duties,’ Professor Prior said. “If we have a duty to defend.the free w’orld, we have a more fundamental duty to be the free world. For this reason, I cannot help being disturbed when politicians talk, as some of them have been talking lately, about a supposed duty of giving up certain ‘intellectual freedoms to which we have been accustomed.

“Most people were, I think, a little annoyed at the way the word ‘peace’ was always on the lips of the Communists at a time when they were ruthlessly hurling troops into battle in places like Korea,’’ Professor Prior said. “And I found this annoying, too • —I don’t like to see peace filched from us in the name of peace. But I don’t like to see freedom filched from us in the name of freedom.” Minister’s Views His reasons for supporting the council were theological, said the Rev. M. Wilson. He believed it was the will of God that people should have freedom. The churches had often suppressed men’s freedom, but he was convinced that when they did that, they had been false to their King and Head. Mr Wilson said he thought it should be compulsory for politicians to read Milton s “Areopagitica” once every three years. Milton said there could be no real virtue without knowledge of good and bad. no real understandmg of truth without knowledge of falsehood. New insights, concepts and discoveries always had to overcome the conservative streak in the community There could be no progress while there

was suppression of expression ar opinion. The basic belief of dem cracy was that truth, if allowed ire expression, would ultimately win. Mr H. G. Kilpatrick said the averai trade union member was not conscio of his rights, and accepted the posts as it was. It was only when acn arose that he started to think ahw such questions. , “You read that the Federation ! Labour took three days to whether a man was a bona fide de* gate.” Mr Kilpatrick said. “I do n believe in a great deal of what u man had to say, but I believe he w the right to say it. As I see it, liwri is only defended by the few.' It only at times of crises that enough o the multitude rallies round.” Functions of Unions Many Supreme Court judges had« cided that the functions of a uni« started and ended with conditions a® hours of work, and wages, said » Kilpatrick. That seemed to be a fain? narrow compass. In the last 10 or iz years, laws passed had been rocre®Ingly restrictive on unions. If party in power did not like the way» union was behaving, the union co® o be wiped out of existence. - In the United States, one of McCarthy’s “bright boys” had In®’ duced the Butler Bill, by. which J union, if merely charged with hanng had any sort of association, no wj* how slight, with persons dealing in an. way at all with the Communist ngcould be suspended, said Mr Patrick. Even if the charge waa pro™ groundless, there would be no umw for several months, and in the meantime the employer could A,, pleased. The bill was not sunea * subversive persons, but at organ®* labour, and there were people in Zealand who would like to do same sort \of thing.