SEDITIOUS BOOK

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21579, 25 August 1933, Page 13

SEDITIOUS BOOK

SIX MEN IMPRISONED REVOLUTIONARY SENTIMENTS "SERIOUS BREACH OF LAW" SENTENCE OF SIX MONTHS [bt telegraph—OWN correspondent] "WELLINGTON. Thursday Six men were found guilty in the Police Court to-day by Mr. E. Page, S.M., 011 charges of printing and publishing a small book, "Karl Marx and the Struggle of the Masses." The magistrate held that the book expressed seditious intention and said that in his view the printing for distribution of thousands of copies of the book could not be regarded as other than a serious breach of the criminal law. "Those who make their residence in this country," said Mr. Page, "must obey its laws." Each of the accused was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. The men were:— John Harvey Blair, Albert .James Birchfield, Richard Henry Webb, Herbert Richard Bryan, William O'Reilly and Leslie Raymond McDowell. In his reserved judgment, Mr. Page said the book consisted in the main of a eulogy of the principles enunciated by Marx and Engels and interpreted by Lenin. It laid stress throughout on the fundamental Marxist and Leninist doctrine that the working class should seize the power of State by means of revolutionary violence and establish a dictatorship of uhe working class. It criticised as covert opportunists, traitors and betrayers many thinkers and writers who advocated the advancement and improvement of the condition of their fellow-workers by means of the power given by the ballot box, by mutual co-operation and goodwill between employer and employee, and by other peaceful constitutional methods. Armed Uprising Advocated

It advocated armed uprising and it concluded by appealing to proletarians of all lands to unite for "the forcible overthrow of the whole extant social system" and the establishment of a dictatorship of the working class by means of a Communist revolution. "In my opinion," said Mr. Page, "the booklet is a seditious document within the statute."

The second question to be decided was whether defendants had been proved to be paiiies to the printing and publishing of the document. Copies of the booklet were seized in a room said to be used as a meeting room by a body known as the Friends of the Soviet Union, in a building in which two of the defendants resided. One of them claimed the booklet as his own. On the front of the booklet was a statement that it was published by the Communist Party of New Zealand and on the last page was the imprint that it was printed by the Red Worker, 166 D Vivian Street, Wellington.

The Red Worker was shown to be the official organ of the Communist Party of New Zealand. The actual type-setting for the booklet was done by a firm of printers under instructions from one of the defendants, and was debited to the Red Worker and paid for by those controlling that paper. Two of the defendants were registered proprietors of the Red Worker, one being the registered printer and the other the registered publisher. Another of the defendants was shown to have assisted in its printing work. Each defendant was shown to be an active participant in the operations of the executive of the Communist Party. In his opinion, it had been established that each defendant was a party to the issue of the booklet and would have to be convicted. War Regulations Criticised Webb, in addressing the Court, maintained that they would never have been convicted if they had been tried before a jury and he criticised the Administration for permitting the war regulations to remain on the Statute Book after the war was over. The present proceedings, he said, were nothing more or less than a mockery, intended to perpetuate the illusion that there was such a thing as justice under the capitalist system. He' asked that when in gaol they should be regarded as political prisoners and allowed, special privileges, such as wearing civilian clothes, writing letters without restriction and receiving visitors. On the application of Detective-Ser-geant Revell, Birclifield was remanded to appear at Timaru on a charge of obtaining £7 Os 9d from the Publio \Y orks Department by falsely representing that he_ was injured by a truck at the Waitaki hydro-electric works.