§ 2.45 p.m.
§ LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGHMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government which political Parties, home or overseas, have permission to parade in uniform in public in this country.
§ LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICHNone, my Lords. Under Section 1 of the Public Order Act 1936 it is an offence for any person to wear, in any public place or at any public meeting, uniform signifying his association with any political organisation or with the promotion of any political object. It is for the police to decide what action should be taken on any particular occasion. Prosecutions for offences under this section require, in England and Wales, the consent of the Attorney General.
§ LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGHMy Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for his reply, may I ask him two questions? Am I not right in presuming that the Public Order Act of 1936, which was aimed at keeping Mosley's Blackshirts off the streets, theoretically applies to all? Surely the 1963 Act did not alter that. Secondly, may I ask the noble Lord whether he saw on the front page of The Times of April 15 alongside the report of the murder of a brother officer of my own son, an old school friend and himself a widow's son, there is a picture of the Provisionals, the murderers' organisation, and the gangsters molls with banners flying, marching through London? How much longer are we going to allow this insult to our dead? Why do we not, to use their own phrase in their own part of the world, send these bastards packing?
§ LORD HARRIS OF GREENWICHMy Lords, in answer to the first point the noble Lord raised, the law is exactly as it was when passed in 1936. On the second point, the Commissioner of Police looked into the matter the noble Lord has raised and decided that the circumstances were not such as to justify criminal proceedings.