04.06.1998

The offensive against The Call

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, May 30 1918

It is quite a frequent occurrence for those responsible for The Call to receive communication on the sustained excellence of the paper. But a few days since, the most distinguished man of letters now living said that The Call was the best socialist paper published since the days of William Morris’s Commonweal.

Now we have evidence of its quality from an altogether different quarter. A new Army Council order, becoming operative on May 27, stipulates that persons desiring to dispatch papers to destinations abroad must obtain a permit for that purpose from the chief postal censor. Application was made to that functionary for permission to send The Call out of Great Britain, and in due course the chief postal censor, writing from the war office, replied that a permit could not be granted for The Call to any foreign destination.

Already prohibited from transmission to neutral countries, The Call is now to be prevented from circulating within the countries with which we are allied in the war. While this is a further testimony to the good work The Call has been doing, it is at the same time a further indication of the repressive methods to which the government is compelled to resort in order to maintain its position. Having found that the use of arbitrary power is indefensible, the authorities must continue their descent until at last not one vestige remains of freedom of speech, of the press, or of the right of association.

The doctrine that we are fighting for free institutions abroad by a strange perversion is made into an argument for the disruption of every principle of liberty at home. The real danger is that, the longer the people of this country remain silent, the more difficult it will be for them to shake off the restrictions that now limit their action at every point.