HANSARD CENSORED

Waikato Independent, Volume XLIV, Issue 6100, 10 September 1947, Page 5

HANSARD CENSORED

WAR-TIME PRECAUTIONS MR CHURCHILL AN OFFENDER It comes as a bit of a shock 'to learn that even Hansard has not always been a full report of the proceedings of the House of Commons, remarks the Daily Herald. Several times during the war it was censored because inadvertently some member of the House, or of the Government, had said something that might have helped the enemy. RearAdmiral G. P. Thomson, who was chief censor during the war, explains in his just-published book, “Blue Pencil Admiral,” how this was done.

Whenever some unwise disclosure was made in debate, he at once got in touch with the Speaker, who would then arrange with the member concerned to have the passage deleted from Hansard, while Thomson himself circularised all newspaper editors with a request not to publish it. Even Mr Churchill had to be excised from the records once or twice.