ENCOURAGING SEDITION.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 June 1921, Page 8

ENCOURAGING SEDITION.

MISS PANKHURST’S OFFENCE. PROCEEDINGS IN COURT. Sentence of six months’ imprisonment in the second division was passed by Sir Alfred Newton, at the Mansion House Police Court, London, recently, on Miss Sylvia Pankhurst, who was charged with ’committing an act calculated and likely to cause sedition and disaffection among His. Majesty’s Forces, in the Navy, and among the civil population by publishing certain articles in the Workers’ Dreadnought, the organ of the Communist Party.

In a letter to “Comrade Lenin,” Miss Pankhurst told of her arrest, and said she expected to get six months’ imprisonment. She had considered a hunger strike, she jivrote, hut that weapon seemed to be destroyed, as the Government were letting the Irish hunger strikers die.

The articles complained of were “Discontent on the Lower Deck/’ in which reference was made to the coming of a “Red” Navy; "How to get a Labor Government”; “The Datum Line,” and “The Yellow Peril.”

M the last hearing Mr. Travers Humphreys, who prosecuted for the Director of Public Prosecutions, quoted certain passages from the articles, and declared that tilie paper advocated revolution, resistance to all constituted authority, and the overthrow, not of the present Government, but of all government in Britain.

Miss Pankhurst, who defended herself, said that while four of the articles were mentioned in the charge, three of them were not written by herself, although, as editor, she took responsibility. The other one, which had not been read—“ The Datum Line”—was. she said, the only editorial article for which she took direct responsibility.

Miss Pankhurst then read the article, which ended by calling for the enlargement of the objects of the strike to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a Soviet.

As Miss Pankhurst proceeded her voice rose, and she spoke at great speed, occasionally/stopping to raise a bunch of fine deep red carnations, which she carried, to her face.

Mr. Travers Humphreys remarked that upon the arrest of another person there had been found two letters.

Miss Pankhurst objected strongly, but was over-ruled, and Mr. Humphreys said that the first letter to which he would call the attention of the Court was the one written to a man named Nenovieff (Miss Pankhurst: A member of the Moscow Soviet) and this explained why the defendant asked for an adjournment at the last hearing. In it she wrote: “Dear Comrade, —I shall be going to prison in a few* days, and I suppose I shall get six months I asked it (an adjournment) on the plea that I wanted to consult my solicitor—a plea which is very seldom refused.” The other letter, said Mr. Travers Humphreys, was written to Lenin. The magistrate said he would abstain from lecturing the defendant. Miss Pankhurst (loudly and laughingly) : Quite so. The magistrate then formally passed sentence, and added that in his opinion the Government had taken a most lenient course in proceeding against her under the particular section of the charge which limited the sentence. Miss Pankhurst picked up her carnations from the solicitor’s table, against which she had been standing, and contented herself with merely saying, “This is a political offence.” Then nodding pleasantly to one or two of her friends in Court, she passed down the stairs smiling broadly.