JOURNALISTS AND OFFICIAL SECRETS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—It is desirable that the position of journalists under the Official Secrets Acts should have the widest possible discussion, but in everyone's interest, it is to be hoped, that, though opinions may differ, controversialists will first inform themselves of the facts. Mr. Corrick was apparently not at Keswick or he would have heard the facts of which he is ignorant, but which, too, he might have obtained by a study of Hansard.
It is true that the Lord Chief Justice in 192o " specifically denied the contention that the Bill was only intended to deal with spying." He went on to say that it related also to " two similar and sometime ancillary matters " : (r) The production of telegrams and (2) the registration of persons in business of receiving postal packets. These do not affect the issue in dispute. Sir Gordon Hewart, however, went on to say, " I should have thought that the first comment .of a journalist would be ' whoever may be the persons referred to, they are certainly not journalists '."
Sir Donald Maclean at the time expressed a fear that what Sir Gordon Hewart thought might not prove to be the case and said, " This Bill extends far beyond what the original .Act intended and it hits at the legitimate exercise of the functions of the Press and certainly impinges most harmfully as I believe, on the liberty of the individual."
Sir Donald Maclean has proved to be right and Sir Gordon Hewart to be wrong.
Mr. Corrick expresses the fear that the Stockport case, the Sandys case and the Coal Mines Legislation case disprove the claim I made at Keswick but he does not give any reasons for his fear. I dealt with these cases fully, so far as they affect the journalist, and cannot trespass on your space to repeat what I then said, but I will,gladly see that Mr. Corrick-receives a copy of The Journal of the Institute of Journalists which contains the report of speeches on the subject by Mr. H. A. Taylor, The President, and others as well as my own.—Sin-
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