The Naumann Affair
That a British Q.C. retained on behalf of a German. a neo- Nazi or not, arrested by the British Occupation authorities. should be refused permission to visit his client in prison. and refused on the specific instructions of- the Foreign Office, leaves an exceedingly unpleasant impression. Lord Simon's allegation in the House of Lords on Tuesday that this was a plain interference by the executive with the judicial duty of the court is on the face of it unanswerable, and Lord Simon had the support of the ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Jowitt, in the Lords and of a former Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, in The Times. What could be said was said by Lord Reading for the Foreign Office. What is in issue is not the charge against Naumann, for no charge has been laid, but his own application under habeas corpus. It is on that that counsel, Mr. Scott Henderson, Q.C., has sought leave to inter- view his client. Leave was not refused point-blank, but granted on conditions which counsel found inacceptable. Why should the normal procedure be varied at all ? The answer seems to be that if the prisoner's British counsel were given permission to interview him the same right could not be denied to his German counsel, to whom some communication might be privily made by the prisoner calculated to endanger the security of Allied troops in Germany. This sounds far-fetched in the extreme. An appeal against the refusal will be heard in due course by two British judges. The strongest reason for suspending judge- ment on the whole affair is not that, but the confidence that is rightly felt in the Foreign Secretary's fairness and good sense. But that confidence is in this case being heavily strained.
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