A war crimes expert who is a Member of Parliament asked in the House of Commons for Government action against the “Greater Britain Movement” which distributes a Nazi-style program through a private club arrangement.
Lord Russell of Liverpool asked whether criminal proceedings could be brought against the movement, which he said could best be described as the Nazi party of Britain, under the Race Relations Act of 1965. A Government spokesman replied that the movement’s literature was not distributed to the public at large and that therefore its sponsors probably could not be prosecuted under that law.
Lord Liverpool conceded that to obtain a copy of the Nazi movement’s program, a prospective purchaser must become a member of the “Viking Book Club, ” sign an enrollment form and pay a small fee.
Lord Stonham, Home Office Undersecretary, agreed that “the program of these people is ‘Mein Kampf’ unadulterated. It is all there — everything but the gas chambers and Bergen-Belsen, ” one of the Nazi death camps. He added that “it would certainly not be safe for the leaders of the Greater Britain movement to assume that, even if the distribution of its pernicious material is confined to members of the Viking Book Club, this necessarily means there is no infringement” of the Race Relations Act.
He added, however, that “there is no evidence that the material has been disseminated to the public at large, and this is an important point as the law now stands.” He told the House that “the active membership of the movement does not exceed 30 persons, 30 intellectual illiterates with an inferiority complex.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
