London Boroughs Press Campaign to Outlaw Racist Incitements

A campaign launched by a London borough council to strengthen the Public Order Act to prevent riots incited by speakers preaching racial or religious hatred received backing today from the Metropolitan Boroughs Standing Joint Committee, representing all boroughs in the city. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, is also conducting a drive to obtain 1, 000,000 signatures for a petition to Parliament for that objective.

With the House of Commons scheduled to reconvene this month, the Joint committee appealed to Home Secretary Henry Brooke for action to make such incitement a criminal offense. In its appeal, the committee told the Home Secretary that, while “adhering to the principle of free speech, we are concerned at the nature of recent disturbances in London. We ask the Government to consider amending the law so that incitement to violence by persons advocating racial or religious discrimination or hatred may become a criminal offense.”

The issue was touched on last night by R.N. Carvalho, president of the Anglo-Jewish Association at a meeting of the organization’s council. He said he agreed that the neo-Fascist groups thrived on publicity and that he also agreed with the advice of the Board of Deputies of British Jews that the targets of the incitement should refrain from responses that created conflicts and resultant publicity for the neo-Nazis.

A related development today involving the neo-Nazis was the rejection by Manchester Magistrate Bancroft Turner of an application by Max Mosley, 22, son of Union Movement leader Oswald Mosley, to put Councillor Peter Grim shaw, secretary of the Manchester district of the Labor party, under bond to keep the peace. The son of the neo-Nazi leader said that Grimshaw had announced he in tended to form an anti-Fascist body from which the younger Mosley inferred that Grimshaw intended to oppose the Union Movement, posing “a possible breach of the peace.” The Magistrate dismissed the argument.