ALIENS AND NIGHT CLUBS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 112, 11 April 1929, Page 10

ALIENS AND NIGHT CLUBS.

INEFFECTIVE REGULATIONS. ! SIR W. HORWOOD’S STATEMENT. Ufidesirable aliens, night clubs, and the present law are subjects which were recently investigated by the Lonc don Daily Mail. It appears that aliens have found it a profitable business to run bogus clubs in the ; West End of the city and elsewhere. No matter what their record, registration cannot be refused them. 1 They have only to get the names ’of twenty-five persons to form a club to go to the clerk of the magistrate for the district in which r their premises are situated, pay ss, and ’ demand enrolment, says a London correspondent., - . • Referring to this practice a magistrate said that it was in effect permitting a licensed house to be opened without any of. the safeguards the Licensing Acts provide. He added: —“There is no inspection of a club, and it is only by espionage that tile police can ascertain if it is being conducted properly. A club license should be granted in the same way as a public-house license. Let any person who wants to open a club apply to a magistrate in open Court. It should be the magistrate’s duty to 1 consider the character of the applicant, the purposes of the club, and its ; necessity or, desirability. “The license should carry with it the obligation, as does an ordinary publichouse license, to submit to police inspection at any time. To meet the objection of well-conducted clubs the magistrate should have power to suspend police inspection at his discretion.” DEPORTATION OF ALIENS. According to the Daily Mail, recommendations for deportation- made by Scotland Yard have been ignored, and persons whom the police deemed- it expedient in the public interest to clear out of the country are still here. • Sir William Horwood, who in November resigned his position as Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, made the following statement, and .authorised its publication, on this matter:— , “My lips are sealed by the Official Secrets Aot. “I trust the Home Secretary (Sir William Joynson-Hicks) may see his way to submit the case to Lord Lee or Fareham’s Police Commission, now sitting with a view to a public nearing of the facts regarding the endeavours of Scotland Yard in the past to obtain the deportation of aliens convicted of offences against the Licensing Act. “Scotland Yard has nothing to fear from a public enquiry and the disclosure of all documents.” “The remedy is. clear,” says the Daily Mail in a leading article. ’ “It is, first to, deport with unflinching firmness aliens convicted of offences against the licensing laws. It is, secondly, to grant licenses for clubs pnly to persons of good chaAlter. It is, thirdly, to give the police the right of entry to a suspected club on special order from the Chief Commissioner, for which he should be held responsible.”