The Sunday Observer, one of Britain’s most widely respected newspapers, has revised the deed of trust under which it has been managed for the past 15 years to eliminate a clause barring Catholics and Jews from serving on the paper’s board of trustees or in senior staff positions.
The paper made the announcement yesterday in a statement in which it rejected charges made against it by the Beaverbrook newspapers that it had been anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic. “Our readers are well aware that there has never been the slightest evidence in our columns of religious discrimination or intolerance,” it declared.
The London Daily Express, a Beaverbrook newspaper, welcomed the move in an editorial today. It termed it belated but commented: “Who can fail to rejoice when prejudice gives way to charity?” The Hon. F.D.L. Astor, a member of the noted British family of newspaper owners, is editor of the Observer. The paper has a circulation in excess of 660,000.
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