COMMUNIST LITERATURE

Hokitika Guardian, 7 April 1927, Page 4

COMMUNIST LITERATURE

SEDITION' PROSECTTIOX. fllY TELrCIIAPn —PEIt PRESS ASSOCIATION.! A UCKLAND, April 0. A charge of selling a document •‘The Rath to Rower.” which encouraged violence and lawlessness, contrary to the War Regulations Continuance Act, was preferred against a waterside worker, Walter Hodgson, at the Police ourt. this morning. Air Paterson, who prosecuted, said the hook did not openly advocate lawlessness and violence, but it did so insidiously and perniciously. The theme of the hook dealt with Parliamentary action, and constitutional methods of the. Labour Labour. The hook considered that they would never got tilings done by those methods, and urged the workers to prepare for a ci'ass war. It was alleged that the hook had a seditious intention. A copy of the book was bought by Detective Robertson at it Communist meeting. It was significant that the opening paragraph referred to the aims of the Communist Party, as assisting the workers in the struggle to overthrow the landlord and capitalist class. It si Iso advocated that the workers should use force to achieve their aims. Air Leary, for the defence, submitted that “The Path to Power” was merely a pamphlet of industrial and domestic discussion, and that this sort of tiling Wiis not considered when the War Regulations were passed. “ The last legislation is now seven years old,” continued Air Leary, ‘‘and the economic position that has arisen since the war does not matter now. So far as the AVar Regulations arc concerned. they have nothing to do with | the AVar. 1 submit that our own sub- I jocts are entitled to discuss strikes | and lockouts, etc., in the same way as they did before the war. If every temperatei'y and well-expressed argument put forward by the Communist Party or the Labour Party is to he tlie subject of persecution by the Crown, it will mean that the only vehicle of expression and education loft will ho that of secret discussion by the most abandoned criminals, burning with a desire to break the back of society.” Air Leary said that the general purport of the book went no iurther than to suggest that' a general strike—of course, accompanies with its attendant inconveniences—was the only way to emancipation. ” There is no revolutionary situation anywhere in the hook, where bloodshed is advocated, he said. “ The book is merely a reference to the economic crisis, and such discussions were never contemplated hv the Act.”

The Magistrate reserved his decision