Some of Britain’s leading newspapers today endorsed the Government’s ban yesterday of planned Trafalgar Square rallies by the country’s three fascist and neo-Nazi organizations, and called for further steps to outlaw open meetings by fascists, Nazis and anti-Semites.
The Daily Herald, Guardian and Daily Telegraph, welcoming the Government’s action editorially, called for further action. The present Public Order Act, passed in 1936, is “inadequate” to cope with the current fascist groups, said the Herald. The law, said this newspaper, “must be reformed to make public, racial incitement an offense.”
The Guardian maintained that the doctrines advocated by the fascist movements “are so abhorrent that many people are unable to tolerate them in silence. We do not have to test our belief in free speech by listening in Trafalgar Square to eulogies of Hitler and his genocide, any more than we have to watch a public lynching to test our belief in the sanctity of human life.”
The Daily Telegraph, calling the Government decision to ban the Trafalgar Square rallies “sensible,” expressed the belief that the step “may give time for devising effective administrative safeguards which would be far better than a dubious amendment of the Public Order Act.”
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