NOT TO BE CRITICISED!

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 10, 11 July 1940, Page 10

NOT TO BE CRITICISED!

. The Waterside Workers' Union is fully entitled to reply to charges and criticism of its members whether made in Parliament or elsewhere, but it has not the least title, to claim immunity from criticism, and emphatically it has no right to claim that members of Parliament should be muzzled with respect to their criticism of waterside workers. The right of members of Parliament to speak freely is one of the greatest safeguards of democracy, and a right that has never been more freely exercised than by members of the Labour Party. If it leads to criticism to which there is a reply, that reply can be made. It is not a one-sided privilege. To be sure, the union resolution refers only to utterances "which gravely endanger national security and are a menace to national unity,"

but this reference, read _ with the protest made at the same time against criticism of waterside workers, shows that it is this criticism the union wants to ban. Why should the waterside workers be sacrosanct? Has any immunity been granted to bankers, farmers, importers, investors, employers? They have hpd every reason to protest that fhey were attacked in immoderate terms, but they have not presumed to regard themselves as a class apart whose conduct even Parliament may not question.