ANOTHER CAT OUT OF THE BAG?

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 64, 13 September 1943, Page 4

ANOTHER CAT OUT OF THE BAG?

The public should be indebted to the Minister of Transport (Mr. O'Brien) for his revealing frankness. Mr. O'Brien, both as~a private member and as Minister, has always been a few jumps ahead of his Labour Party colleagues in letting the public know what really lies behind his party's policy. On the banking issue, for instance, he must have often proved a source of embarrassment to Mr, Nash, While the Minister of Finance has been endeavouring to persuade the people that the Labour Party has all the powers it needs to control the banking system, Mr, O'Brien has. been saying that control of private banking must come. Now the Minister has shed a little light on another control question. In an endeavour to explain away the vote of no-confidence which an Eltham meeting passed on the Minister of Marketing (Mr. Barclay), Mr. O'Brien said the vote had been passed because the farmers had been kept in blindness by the newspapers. In other words Mr. Barclay's unpopularity is due not to his own acts, or the policy of the Govsteiment, but to misrepresentation by the Press. The farmers and the public, who have been suffering for years under the bureaucratic control which the Marketing Department has exercised over the production and distribution of the people's foodstuffs, are not likely to be so easily misled. Nor are they likely to forget that Mr. Barclay, by his autocratic action in insisting that meetings of Primary Production Councils should be closed to the Press, has himself prevented the public from obtaining information to Which they are clearly entitled. But Mr. O'Brien went a lot further than alleging misrepresentation. "There should be licences for newspapers," he declared, "and every paper caught twisting the facts should have its licence suspended," The implications of such a move are not difficult to see. Any newspaper Which refused to say exactly what the Minister of Marketing, or any other Minister, wanted it to say, or which dared to publish criticism Of the actions of Ministers, would be in danger of having its licence revoked. For a party Government would be the judge of "twisting." How does this square with Labour's adherence to the four freedoms, of Whidh freedom of speech is one? Finally, the public are entitled to know With what authority the Minister of Transport, is speaking, Is he voicing his own personal opinion or has he, in the exuberance of the moment, let one more cat out of the political bag?