SUNDAY OBSERVANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21308, 13 April 1931, Page 7

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE

PROPOSALS IN BRITAIN MUSICAL AND OTHER PERFORMANCES. (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) LONDON, April 10. The Sunday Entertainments Bill permits councils to license Sunday kinemas, debates, musical performances, and exhibitions of animals or inanimate objects, but it does not mention stage plays. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, April 10. (Received April 11, at 5 p.m.) Licenses under the Sunday Entertainments Bill will be granted on condition that the profits are paid to charitable objects approved by the council, and the workers employed are not to be deprived of their one day’s rest in the week. The Bill does not give permission for stage plays. Legal actions arising out of seventeenth and eighteenth century Sunday Observance Acts are annulled. OPPOSITION TO BILL. LONDON, April 11. (Received April 12, at 6.20 p.m.) The Lord’s Day Observance Society announces that 3000 sermons are being preached throughout England in furtherance of the fight for Sunday observance as a result of the Government’s Bill. Theatrical managers state that it is grossly unfair that theatres should be omitted from the Bill.

The Home Secretary (Mr J. li. Clynes) announced in the House of Commons on March 26 that in view of the public demand for a review of the problem of Sunday entertainment, the Government would introduce a Bill for the purpose, not of advocating any particular policy, but of affording Parliament the opportunity to discuss the situation which had arisen from the recent decisions in the courts and to find a solution which would approximate more closely to the wishes of the nation as a whole. The Bill would accordingly provide machinery for regulating the existing practice, and local authorities would bo granted permission for Sunday opening, subject to such conditions as they thought fit. Provision would be made in the Bill for a continuance of the existing practice under which the Sunday opening of the kinemas has been subject to the condition that the profits should be given to approved charities, and that uo employees should be worked seven days a week. It would be for Parliament freely to determine whether the existing law, as declared by the courts, should remain unaltered, whether the existing practice should be legalised, or whether that practice should be modified or extended.