LABOUR JPs
By Brian Pearce
1960The NewsletterBrian Pearce Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
A neighbour of mine, Mr. Norman Wallace, a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, has been distrained (I believe that’s the word) for non-payment of that part of his rates which goes for ‘civil defence’. He thinks that what is called civil defence is a fraud.
The chairman of the bench of magistrates who decided on this action was Frank Bailey, leader of the Labour group on Hornsey Borough Council, and his fellow-magistrate was Labour MP Harry Hynd.
Whether one agrees or not with Mr. Wallace’s type of individual protest, it is certainly, I think, disquieting to find prominent members of the Labour movement functioning as . repressors of such a protest. Incidents of this sort bring up the whole question of Labour JPs and what happens when socialists take positions in the repressive organs of the capitalist State.