INCITEMENT TO DISORDER

Taranaki Daily News, 14 December 1932, Page 7

INCITEMENT TO DISORDER

IMPRISONMENT SENTENCE MOVEMENT OF UNEMPLOYED PUNISHMENT OF LEADER COMMENT BY THE JUDGE By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. London, Dec. 12. Sidney Job Elias, the unemployed movement leader, has been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for inciting to disorder. Mr. Justice Charles declared that he was sure the jury would agree that the case had been free from political bias. Britain’s policy was to allow people to express any views and advocate any revolution they wished, provided they refrained from inciting others to disorder and violence. Elias had admitted that the “unemployed hunger march” was aimed not at drawing attention to troubles bravely borne, but at inciting the mass to struggle against the Capitalist state. Demonstrations requiring police intervention were unlawful. Passing sentence, Mr. Justice Charles added: “The jury has rightly convicted Elias. The Unemployed Workers’ Movement is not in the interests of the workers because the British worker is honest and law-abiding, but one in a thousand is led astray by the activities which Elias prosecuted at the behest of Moscow. The maximum sentence is far too short.”

A well-dressed woman shouted: “How dare you arrogate the right to speak for the workers; to hell with Capitalist justice!” - ■ , ■ . *...■■ INSTRUCTIONS FROM MOSCOW. ELIAS’ OFFENDING LETTER. “You must fight the police terror and agitate for the chief’s dismissal,” declared a long letter from Moscow instructing Hannington and Emfys Llewellyn, leaders of the Unemployed Workers’ Union, and signed by Sidney Job Elias, aged 35, who was arrested on November 4 owing to the discovery of the letter when the police raided Hannington’s office.

Elias, the chairman of the movement, wrote the letter during a visit to Russia. He was charged at Bow Street with inciting Hannington and Llewellyn to cause discontent and dissatisfaction and ill-will between different classes of his Majesty’s subjects and to create public disturbances against the police. Further extracts, from the Moscow letter included: “There is no clear indication that the movement is trying to break the police terror in Birkenhead, the fact being overlooked that the police are successfully breaking Birkenhead’s spirit. Some proposals must be made to the comrades at Birkenhead and Liverpool on the methods of fighting the police terror, and an agitation must be .continued in .the streets simultaneously with the trade unions. There must be a national call to the rest of the country to join, the struggle to abolish the means test?

Replying to the magistrate’s question prosecuting counsel said the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, which organised the unemployed marches, was a section of the Third International, under whose instructions Elias was acting.