M ARRIAGE AND DIVORCE Sl Ite—As chairman of one of the bodies
that gave evidence before the Royal Commission '11 Marriage and Divorce, I wish to record our Profound disappointment that its report, which took five years to compile and cost £30,000 to Produce, contributes almost nothing of Practical value towards a solution of the urgent had questions with which the Commission ", ad to deal. The unanimous recommendations 4re of trifling importance and even the pairaotority recommendations tinker with the b lein instead of advancing any fundamental solutions. .1..ord Walker alone goes to the heart of the ,Ntter in recommending that marriages which na.ve irretrievably broken up should be dis- s,!"'ved. All the other members of the Commis- "thl°n.commit themselves in varying degrees to i"e idea that there is some merit in maintain- the form of a marriage when its substance has long been a thing of the past. Put into Pra f, Ctice as it is by the existing law, this notion People a multitude of otherwise respectable t'"I",.°Ple into irregular unions and stigmatises `uerwise normal children as illegitimate. Fur h Ler, the doctrine (which the rest of the Lb0Mmission support) that divorce must be fscanae„cl (III a matrimonial offence, with ifs con- sequent legal fiction of 'guilty' and 'innocent' is completely unrealistic in nine cases o't 0,f ten, and provides the technically *.inno- ,Lnt,,
ticism
When actuated by spite or religious , with unlimited opportunities to Persecute the 'guilty' party and his or her children.
We cannot but feel that too little attention was paid to the factual and realistic evidence submitted by bodies like ourselves and far too much to theories based on religious and tradi- tional prejudice.—Yours faithfully, The Progressive League, 20 Buckingham Street, WC2
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