§ Mr. Sextonasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education whether his attention has been drawn to the misstatement of fact in two books in use in state-aided schools in this country, Professor Hearnshaw's A First Book on English History, a book in which he attributes the coal strike and the supplementary strike of 1926 to fomentations by the Soviet Government in Moscow, and to Thatcher and Schwill's A General History of Europe, which states that in three years the Bolshevist authorities admit the execution of 1,800,000 people; and whether the Board of Education will prohibit in state-aided schools the use of books which tend to distort the facts of history?
Mr. LindsayMy Noble Friend's attention has been drawn to these books. As I explained in my answers to the hon. Members for Govan (Mr. Maclean) and Shoreditch (Mr. Thurtle) on 25th November and the 2nd December last respectively, it is the Board's policy to leave the choice of books, together with details of the curriculum generally, to the discretion of the local education authority or other authority responsible for the school. My Noble Friend sees no ground for interfering with this discretion in the present case. There would be obvious difficulties and dangers attending the establishment of a departmental censorship such as the hon. Member suggests.