AN INJURY- TO UNIONISM IT is intensely annoying to those
of us who know that the Unionist Party could easily be the saviour of the country when the principles of our party are presented, in a wrong light and the party is made to appear as the enemy of the very things after which real. Unionists are incessantly striving. True Unionists stand to-day for a wider and more significant Unionism than that of the past generation ; they have brought new meanings into their name, and they are rightly ,resentful when their enemies are given a pretext for pretending that Unionism cultivates privilege and class distinction, while all the time its real objectives are equality of opportunity and the strict justice which ignores the boundaries of class and creed. Feeling as strongly as we do about all this we must protest against the stupidity which first brought a prosecution against the fantastic young men who held up a Daily Herald van and scattered its load of papers and then withdrew the. prosecution. As many newspapers have published only the scantiest accounts of the incident and the trial we doubt whether most of our readers will be aware of the indignation which has been caused throughout the country or of the excuse which the whole business has given to the Labour Party and to Liberals for abusing the Government. They are saying that Unionists are now seen clearly for what they are—men intent upon bending even the law of the land to their own purposes. We learn from the Attorney-General that the Cabinet never discussed the prosecution, and it is even possible that the Home Office issued no directions, but the blame, however unfairly, is nevertheless put on the Government. Let us recall the facts. In the early morning of October 17th, one of the Daily Herald lorries was carrying eight thousand newspapers to Euston Station. It was going up Bouverie Street when four young men hr Fascist uniform jumped at the driver, who was a lame man, and ordered him to stop. One of the Fascists threatened him with a revolver. When the driver had been got rid of under pain of being shot the young men mounted the lorry- and drove away. Near Covent Garden the lorry skidded, ran into something and was damaged ; the papers were scattered in the street. When these four men appeared before Sir -Vansittart Bowater on a charge of larceny the Public 'Prosecutor withdrew this serious charge. The magistrate pointed out 'that the course taken by the Public Prosecutor was "extremely lenient.": He then did all that was possible in the circumstances—bound over the four prisoners to be of good behaviour. The man who had carried the revolver, it is true, was fined £20 for having a revolver without a licence; but that had nothing to do with the main charge.
What Labour men and Liberals all over the country are saying—and we fear that they have some reason— is that if four Communists wearing uniforms and using a revolver had- held up a van belonging to a Unionist paper, had threatened the driver, had damaged the van and had scattered the papers in the street, the Unionist Press would have been rent with furious 'exeitement. It would have been satisfied with nothing less than an exemplary -punishment. Yet the law is supposed to take no cognizance of political doctrines. It was irre- levant for the four Fascists to say that the Daily Herald' was a disloyal newspaper and that they Were merely showing a decent patriotic hatred for it and all its ways. What they -actually did, according to the law, wag to strike a blow against 'the liberty of printing and aiainst property. Sir Douglas Hogg, the -Attorney-General, speaking at the Guildhall Banquet, declared that the Public PrOsectitor had felt satisfied, "as every competent lawyer must have felt," that on the evidence there was no case to put before a jury. We always listen with great respect to Sir Douglas Hogg, ,for he is a, man of flawless honesty, and we are confident that he meant what he said. We may perhaps, therefore, take him to have meant that there was not enough evidence to support the charge of larceny. We suppose that there was not. Nobody thinks that the four young men wanted to steal the van and papers. Their whole object was to " lam " the Daily Herald. But surely, in these circumstances the charge could have been better framed to meet the case ?
The public is growing tired of these bunglings, whoever may be responsible. First there was the discreditable fiasco of the Campbell prosecution when the Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, said that the Cabinet had not discussed the withdrawal of the prosecution of Communists, though it afterwards had to be admitted that there had been a Cabinet discussion. Then there was the kidnapping of the Communist, Mr. Pollitt. Kidnapping is a serious offence, and in our opinion the Fascists guilty of it were let off too lightly. We need not pretend that any real harm has been done to the Daily Herald. On the contrary, the whole affair has been a very good advertisement for it. Behind the loud indignation. of Labour men and Liberals there is much secret delight over the gift of a new stick with which to beat the Government.
It is just that delight which hits us hard as Unionists. We strongly object to anybody being given cause to say that under a Unionist Government the old saying' about one law for the rich and another for the poor is changed so as to read that there is one law for Unionists, who are let off, and another for Communists, who are prosecuted in considerable numbers.
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