Like all High Churchmen, Atterbury has a clear sense that Church and State can no longer be equated, and he is anxious to preserve the personality of the Church from the invasions of an alien body.
Harold J. Laski
The Public Record
Harold Joseph Laski was an English political theorist and economist. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950. He first promoted pluralism by emphasising the importance of local voluntary communities such as trade unions. After 1930, he began to emphasize the need for a workers' revolution, which he hinted might be violent. Laski's position angered Labour leaders who promised a nonviolent democratic transformation. Laski's position on democracy-threatening violence came under further attack from Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 1945 UK general election, and the Labour Party had to disavow Laski, its own chairman.
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To be real, it must be independent, and to be independent, it must have organs of self-expression.
He saw at the outset that the real issue was defined by the Church's claim to be a divine society, with rights thus consecrated by the conditions of its origin.
If they are divine, no human authority can either supersede or limit them....
How can rights that are inherent be given up?
For the church's hold upon men is dependent upon their faith in the independence of her principles.
For it is obvious that the partnership of Church and State must be upon conditions; and once the State had permitted the existence of creeds other than that of its official adoption, it could not maintain the exclusive power for which the…
And when the Church not only complained of State-betrayal, but attempted the use of political means to enforce remedial measures it was inevitable that statesmen would use the weapons ready to their hand to coerce it to their will.
The real remedy for the High Churchmen was not exclusiveness but disestablishment.
But here I should emphasize my own belief that, broadly speaking, such freedom of expression as I have discussed means freedom to express one’s ideas on general subjects, on themes of public importance, rather than on the character of…
I have not, I think, a right to suggest that Jones beats his wife, or that Brown continually cheats his employer, unless I can prove, first that the suggestions are true, and, second, that they have a definite public import.
I have not a right to create scandal because I find pleasure or profit in speaking ill of my neighbour.
But if Brown, for instance, is a candidate for public office, my view that he cheats his employer is directly relevant to the question of his fitness to be elected; and if I can prove that my view is true, it is in the public interest that…
I ought not to be permitted to inflict unnecessary pain on any person unless there is relevant social welfare in that infliction.
The public interest in the habits of individuals is real, and we must be careful to give it its proper protection.
It is, I think, reasonable to doubt whether the Anglo-American law of libel, in its present state, does not push too far the right of the individual citizen to be protected from comment.
Outrageous damages, which bear no measurable relation to anything, are often claimed and not seldom awarded.
Where a political flavour enters into a case, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to persuade a jury to consider the issue on its merits.
I have myself sat on a jury in a political libel case of which I can only say that I was almost persuaded to doubt the validity of the jury-system altogether by the habits there displayed.
I am tempted to suggest that, criminal libel apart, it would be worth while considering the abolition of damages in all political or quasi-political cases, and the concentration, as an alternative, upon proper publicity for the form of…
We have, for instance, got into the bad habit in England of thinking that the social position of the plaintiff is a measure of the damages he should receive; and it is well known that there are places where, for instance, a socialist could…
As the law at present stands and works, I do not think I could even say of a candidate for the House of Commons that he was not likely to be more than a permanent back-bencher without having to pay heavily for my opinion.
But I turn from these relatively simple matters to the political aspect of freedom of expression which is, of course, the pith of the whole problem.
What opinions, if any, are to be prohibited on the ground that they incite to subversive conduct?
Is there a difference between normal times and a time of crisis like, let us say, a war or a general strike?
Politicians like Harold J. Laski
