THE GOVERNMENT may or may not have had good reasons
for ensuring that a private individual in private employment Was deprived of his job. What is intolerable is that the private Individual should have no genuine right of appeal. Mr. Lang chose to see a senior civil servant rather than wait (how long?) until the bureaucracy had formulated a method whereby he could have been interviewed by the 'Three Advisers' who hear civil servants' appeals. He obviously wasted his breath in speaking to the civil servant. And the Minister of Supply himself said that : 'I do not think that any further reference to the Three Advisers will give us any more information than 'gas available to us when we reached our decision.' No objec- tion was raised when the Privy Councillors' conference sug- gested that in borderline cases 'it is right to continue the practice of tilting the balance in favour of offering greater protection to the security of the State rather than in the direction of safeguarding the rights of the individual.' But at last we come down to cases, and I for one am by no means satisfied that this theory, which is unexceptionable only so long as all other things are equal, is one which our society can or should readily tolerate in time of peace. Where considerations of security are paramount we cannot expect to know the details; but we should at least be satisfied that the individual in such cases as this has the right to appeal to a body which would require something more from his accusers than vague assurances and ,Cryptic references. The Minister no doubt did what he honestly believed he had to do within the framework laid down for him. Does the framework bear examination?
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