speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

The Unhappy History of Regulation
After its passage, Soskice cautioned that the Act was "designed to
deal with the more dangerous, persistent and insidious forms of
propaganda campaigns . . . which, over a period of time, engender
the hate which begets violence." Fascists immediately exploited a
loophole by establishing the Viking Book Club "for the study of
literature dealing with the Jewish Question and other racial problems
which it is not permissible to sell to the general public . . . ."
The first prosecution was directed at a 17-year-old white labourer
who stuck a Greater Britain Movement leaflet entitled "Blacks not
wanted here" on the door of MP Sid Bidwell and threw another
through his window, wrapped in a beer bottle—neither of which,
the court held, was "publication or distribution." A jury convicted
Colin Jordan, rejecting his claim that a pamphlet about "The Coloured
Invasion" was only trying to inform the public about a grave
national problem. But there were almost as many successful prosecutions
of black power advocates, while sophisticated racists
evaded punishment. 3 During debate over the Commonwealth Immigrants
Act 1968, which denied entry to East African Asians holding
UK passports, the Racial Preservation Society journal Southern
News denounced the "dangers of race mixing," speculated about
genetic differences, and urged repatriation as a "humane solution."
It celebrated its acquittal by reprinting a "Souvenir Edition" defiantly
captioned "The Paper the Government Tried to Suppress."
One of the most troubling trials involved British National Party
chairman John Kingsley Read, who harangued 300 people:
Fellow racialists, fellow Britons, and fellow Whites, I have been
told I cannot refer to coloured immigrants. So you can forgive me
if I refer to niggers, wogs and coons. [Commenting on the murder
of Gurdip Singh Chagger, he added:] Last week in Southall, one
nigger stabbed another nigger. Very unfortunate. One down and a
million to go.
The first jury hung after two hours. On retrial, Read insisted his
epithets were a "jocular aside" and the numbers referred to immigration,
not murder. Instructing the jury, Judge McKinon mentioned
that his own public school nickname had been "nigger" and told a
story about another old boy, a Maharajah, who had greeted him by
that endearment years later during a chance encounter in Picadilly.
The law, he said,
does not contemplate reasoned argument directed to stemming
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