ENGLISH ATTITUDE

Hokitika Guardian, 11 November 1936, Page 5

ENGLISH ATTITUDE

TO FREER CASE

THE FULL REASONS DEMANDED.

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright).

LONDON. November 10,

Mr Arthur Henderson, referring to "the Freer case, declared to the Australian Associated Press: “If the reply of the Commonwealth Government is unsatisfactory, I shall take the matter further. I am concerned with the question of principle rather than a specific case. “It seems a dangerous precedent if a British subject can be excluded from any part of the British Empire, a British passport and immigration laws governing settlement. “I understond in Mrs Freer’s case, the question of settlement did not arise. I am not aware of any law on the statute book preventing Australians from entering England. Indeed I am doubtful whether they could be stopped for any reason, unless they were criminals. Certainly there is nothing to prevent unmarried persons from the Dominions, living as man and wife, from coming to* England, which does not possess a Mann Act like the United States.

v , “There*"is the moral issue,’however. The only; subsidiary'principle at stake is whether British subjects may not be permitted to pass freely through territories |of which they are citizens.

BY COMMONWEALTH MINISTER

EXCLUSION OF MRS FREER

(Australian Press Association.)

CANBERRA, Nov. 11

The Rt. Hon. J. H. Lyons, immediately’ upon his arrival from Melboiiie, sent for papers dealing with the exclusion of Mrs Freer from, Australia, and later gave an assurance, that the .Minister of the Interior (Mr Patterson) would mak e a statement on Mrs Freer’s exclusion in the House of Representatives to-day.