RIVAL FACTIONS CLASH

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22447, 30 September 1947, Page 3

RIVAL FACTIONS CLASH

LONDON DEMONSTRATION ALLEGED FASCISTS MEET (9 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 28. The police closed the meeting of the allegedly pro-Fascist British League of ex-servicemen in London’s East End tonight after a 90-minute shouting match between opposition factions. Fifty policemen with linked arms slowly forced the crowd of about 2,000 into a nearby main road, where mounted police dispersed them. The police arrested two persons. A league bodyguard when the meeting closed, escorted to a motor-car the principal speaker, Jeffrey Hamm, who was interned during the war, and who is at present on bail on remand to October 10 on charges of using insulting words at a previous rpeeting. League supporters in the crowd shouted, “Heil Hamm,” and anti-Jew-ish slogans- Some gave the Fascist salute and cried, “Down With Communism.”

Rivals shouted “Germany Calling,” in imitation of the voice the late William Joyce used in wartime broadcasts from Germany. Senior officers of Scotland Yard and a group of Labour members of Parliament watched the meeting.

Hamm told the meeting that he had lost his job as a result of the proceedings taken against him. He said he hoped that the Minister of Labour, Mr. G. A. Isaacs, would use a control engagement order to get him another.