MENTAL HEALTH MEETING Scientologists Go To Court

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32145, 14 November 1969, Page 9

MENTAL HEALTH MEETING Scientologists Go To Court

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, November 13. Eight members of the Scientology sect yesterday effectively stopped the National Association for Mental Health from holding its annual meeting.

The Scientologists obtained a court order saying that the meeting could only be opened and then adjourned because the association was trying to stop them from seeking office in it

In a bid to prevent what the association claims is a “Scientology take-over” it asked the Scientologists to resign from the organisation. Instead, the eight went to Court, obtained the order and then organised a demonstration in front of the meeting hall. Inside about 400 association members voted to postpone the meeting until the courts decide the issue. In Parliament last night a Labour peeress, Lady Stocks, complained that the Scientology sect was sending out literature which appeared to contain the ravings of lunacy. She told the House of Lords during a debate that she had received Scientology propaganda which included accounts of sadistic torture in mental homes and psychiatric units and horrifying pictures of skeletons labelled “psychiatry” trampling on unhappy human beings. Lady Stocks said that she feared it might create a general fear of psychology or psychiatry and the work of the Mental Health Service. Referring to the cherished

([rights of the press and of in- : dividuals to express opinions, I she added: “But there conies ! a point in the face of propa- > ganda being carried on by the ! Scientologists when we may have to compromise with expressions of freedom.”