James Caunt, editor and publisher of the Morcambe and Heysham Visitor, a weekly newspaper, was today ordered held for a jury trial on charges of having published an editorial inciting violence against the Jews. The order was issued by a magistrate in Morcambe who conducted the preliminary hearing.
Caunt insisted that he had not intended to foment inter-racial strife in Britain, but was affected by anti-British propaganda published by Jews in America and the hanging of two Britons by Irgunists in Palestine. Repeating a slander which appeared in the editorial, Caunt told the examining magistrate that if an analysis were made of the people convicted of black market activities in Britain, the Jews would lead other lawbreakers.
The government has ordered Caunt’s prosecution as one of two cases which Home Secretary James Chuter Ede considered passed legal bounds in the recently intensified anti-Jewish campaign in Britain. The editorial was published last summer at the height of the anti-Jewish riots and demonstrations in a dozen British cities.
Two Jewish youths, Norman and Gerald Jacobs, were today released on bail pending their trial next week on charges of “insulting behavior” at a fascist meeting held in London yesterday. A fascist agitator, Frederick Bailey, who was arrested yesterday after the meeting, called by the British League of Ex-Servicemen, was dispersed, was placed on probation for a year.
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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.
