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Groups in Britain Ask Government Action to Strengthen Anti-fascist Legislation

November 24, 1947
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The unsuccessful prosecution of James Caunt, editor of a provincial weekly, on charges of inciting violence against Jews indicates the inadequacy of present British legislation dealing with anti-Semitic and fascist activities, it was stressed here today at two parallel meetings of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the National Council for Civil Liberties.

At the Deputies meeting it was pointed out that anti-Semitic activities were not confined to the Mosleyites alone, but were also being aided by “persons of influence and power” who were responsible for newspaper scares concerning “Jewish terrorists.” The delegates to the Civil Liberties parley adopted resolutions demanding the banning of anti-Semitic propaganda in Britain and stressing the duty of the British press and the nationalized British Broadcasting System in educating the people against racism.

An editorial in the Reynolds News today attacked as “fantastic” the position of Home Secretary James Chuter Ede that he can do nothing to stop Sir Oswald Mosley, pre-war British fascist leader, from organizing new fascist groups. It urged the government not to let fascism “crawl in through legal loopholes.”

Ivor Thomas, of Bristol, was yesterday arraigned in a London court on charges of attempting to blow up the Jewish Agency building here last June. In a statement in his defense, Worth insisted that he had taken the law into his own hands because the government had failed to deal with a situation “in which to quote the words of (Foreign Secretary) Bevin ‘Jewry is at war with the Gentile world.'”

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